It’s like taken the shit you just shit and wipe you ass with it!

It's interesting with Eurovision song contest (don’t be sorry if you don't have that in your country, it's the worst kind of entertainment, imagine Idol but worse). It's almost the only window now a day for the major companies. And every year when you speak with the organizers they want to be cooler, have better artists and better songs and be up to date with the rest of the music industry.

And every year they fail miserably.

They seem to go full in to find this artist that a local opening of a shopping center never will use. Or dig up old Idol artists that are not good enough. It’s all the opposite against what they talk about the rest of the year.

Even the Swedish presenters are like the worst of the worst. They take old farts of artists that have been in the completion to present the new shit. It’s like taken the shit you just shit and wipe you ass with it. This is the artist that are worse the Michel Bublé and only comes out on Christmas because you need to be so shit wasted to even hear them sing.

 

They take in the big failures like The Foo Conspiracy. This is a Swedish boyband. Yes you have never heard of it if you are outside Sweden. To be honest I never heard a song from them. Still they had a lot of small girls following them a couple of years ago. And now they make a last attempt (with one member short) in Eurovision. Tragic!

They take out Charlotte Perelli, who won the whole shit a couple a years ago. Since she only has worked with opening shopping mall since then. I guess she needs to be in the limelight for a bit. Same with the dreadful artist Loreen that won with Euphoria couple years ago. She is barely opening up shopping malls today.

Where have they dug up Roger Pontare? This is as bad as putting out a new single with Vanilla Ice.

Then you have the artists that are on every year, Ace Wilder, Lisa Ajax, Mariette. Failed artists that now just have to do Eurovision. Now also joining the parade is Jasmine Kara who really is the most failed artist ever. Of course they also have taken in artists that people listens to but is ashamed to listen to like De vet du.

The of course the artist they take in just so they can say that they have diversity. The hardrock band Dissmissed. Every hard rock band that has been on is just not taken seriously. Maybe they can no play on Sweden Rock since it was bought by Live Nation and they will probably destroy the lineup with bands like The Poodles. Sabaton Open Air is heading the same way, so maybe they can play there as well in front of the taco tent.
In this section is Les Gordons that we publish some songs of. They are put there just to be fill out with their rock’n’roll. Unfortunally my guess is that they won’t go further in their group. I’m surprised if they go to the second chance. In reality there is no backup on them and they are more in as a reason to tell the people that yes we have all genres, not excluding anyone. But all press goes on all old Idols stars and other stuff they just drown in the 10 other artist that universal will put money on.

A jojking same who is from South America. Yes Eurovision is like a freak show. And to top that you get Owe Thörnqvist, now we have a frak show a big freak show!

Värsta skandalen är schlagerfinalen där menlösa får visas upp varje år......

Monday

It's a long Monday. I started 7:00 this morning and I have meetings booked until 23:00. It's a long day.

Make up your mind.

It’s really interesting to see people present themselves to me with their music and claiming that they are really dedicated to doing music and become a successful artist.

Then you open their homepage and just a section is about music. There is sections that they write books, do poetry some amateur theatre. Just that they have just a facebook page nothing more. I mean if you are dedicated you probably would have homepage, facebook, twitter, youtube channel, everything containing your music, if that was really your goal.

Most of these people are mainly looking for handle over all work on somebody else so they could fix a career for them. Well if it fails they have other people doing the same on the other stuff they are doing.

Also people that has quite many bands are the same. Make up your mind and don’t have them all on one page. If you have several bands, let them live in different spaces, not the same space. That also just becomes for that, no you are not dedicated. 

Just some update

The last of the demo pile for this year.  And I will have a race of listening in 3 hours straight tonight.

It was fun on the seminars yesterday where the confession was that actually no one knows how to do it right releasing music right now. Everybody has their own ways and it seems like most just do trail and error. And it doesn’t seems to work on two different releases, it can change a lot very fast.

The most stupid was that yet another time someone thinks that they can do A&R work with just figures. I guess I need to write a longer post about that next week.

What pisses me off.

What really pisses me off is people that is very meticulous with their own things, but don't give a shit about others.

Like an artist that work for copyright issues for the union but when he put out music he used pirated bar codes to save money. Yes you should pay for his music but the person that maintain the bar code system you can just fuck over.

Or when an artist gives out covers but don't care to get all the info around the writers or publishers and just write stuff that is very hard to track. But are very concern to get out that dollar that came in through Spotify and make a hell of a scene to get it.

They are just about me, myself and I in their brain. And they usually market themselves as fair.

Nagg, but only if you have something to nagg about.

I sometimes get from artists that we should call up the radio stations, or blogs, newspapers whatever. The thing is you only do that if you have something new. They all look and read on our first send outs on e-mail. I know that since every time I speak to them they can actually say things from the text. So no it’s not that they don’t get the message. More that the message is not interesting enough to react on.

So if I then call back a week later and ask the same question “did you like the song, will you add it?”. They just say, well have something happened with it somewhere else. If the answer then is no, well they it’s easy for them to say no.

The strategy is to have something new to get in. Like calling up, “ Hey did you see they new video”. Or “Hey we just reached 50 000 streams and got in on this cool playlist”, “Or the artist will play in your city next week”. Anything new, not just did you listen to the song again.

Mainly also this is the problem that you get from the artists. If it is an artist release themselves they only have new things for two weeks, the song and a video. When you work with professional record labels they usually have things for at least 6 weeks. They really good ones 10 weeks or more.

They actually create all the “new” stuff happenings beforehand. Then if something really happens they use that and push the other stuff in the future.

And yes most media wait out other media so it is some kind of chicken and egg debate about it. Still there is so much stuff that can be done if you just plan ahead.

How was the song written?

When I’m on conferences around the world this is the headline I really hate “How was the song written”. In these panels they pick out the songwriters of some famous song and ask them how they wrote the song.

The problem is that yes they wrote the damn song in the same way everybody else write songs. They sat down or send files to each other.  That’s it. Usually it’s not much of a story about it. Yes they are good on writing hooks in songs. But really can you discuss how you do that? No I guess not.

And every time you are on these panels it’s the same. They sit up there and actually have nothing to contribute. And then someone ask a question how did the song get big? And they don’t have a clue around that one. That is actually the interesting part. I mean all the people in the audience want to know how to get their song as big as they got theirs. Often in these situations though they don’t know.

Because they just sold the song to a label with an artist. And the success of this song is because the PR team around that artist was the ones who made it a hit. And that story they don’t have, if you lucky they might have some fragments around it.

The answer is that yes we have a good publishing team with good relations to labels with a lot of money to put on their artists. That is not so sexy answer, but hey it’s the truth. Well then all will ask how we get in touch with these good people? That question they don’t want to answer.  I mean they don’t want to be bumped off the golden goose by someone else.

The interesting part is that you should bring down the PR team around the song, but that never happens. I guess these are the people that are hard to find. They don’t stand with the names under the song, but in most cases they actually did more work than the writer and artists together. It’s rare through they are shown on panels. Then also they can be quite many in each team. 

Get out from the backstage area!

I was working with the Magnettes again ( a lot of them right now since they have been in Stockholm for a week ). They had a secret show on the chamber of commerce in Stockholm last night. And they are pro on the things they do.

First they do a great show. But afterwards they just go backstage, calm down for a few minutes. Then they go out and mingle with the audience. Especially in gig like this where it is many influential people gathering it’s so important. I watch them talking to people in over 30 minutes until the end to get connections and make people remember them.

I go so many examples where bands just go back stage after the show. Grab some of the beers that are there. Take in some friends and keep the party there. Sure you are tired after a show. But the work is going on, actually that is the most important part, it’s here you can get feedback and get fans into super fans.

And this is actually not new. I read about Metallica (who released a new album today)  that made that their strategy to hang in front of the stage after gigs talking to fans to get more info how the show was and what they can improve.

And yes this helps. I know so many bands I have seen and wanted some information but they went somewhere backstage and never came back. Even so stranger with bands doing that when they invited me to see the show and then just ended up partying with their friends backstage.

So did things helped for The Magnettes, yes they just got a cool thing going on with Vitamin Well that sprung out from being backstage talking to people. 

What happened to the EPK video?

When I was going through mails with ”demos”. I just found it strange that I almost never (actually I don’t I ever had one sent to me, but have done them for my bands) had a video sent to me about the band. That is the way to market any product, a commercial. And now with all the easy software and cheap cameras, it’s really easy to make a short fun video that presents the artist.

Yes in the old days a music video was a kind of commercial for the song. If you had a cool video people watched it and you got addicted to the song. And normal music videos are sent to me very often. But that is videos for the song, i'm talking a video about the artist.

No this is more like a video that tells about the artist what they have done, like a biography in pictures. This is done for companies all the time. Not so much broadcast but used on fairs and exhibitions.

As it is now, I read some biography when I listen to the song that is presented. But that can be done so much better. I’m surprised that this hasn’t become bigger? We had EPK for awhile, but it seems to be gone?

It’s like we still think sending in a demo is the shit. That was done in the 80:s but it was the most cost efficient. That is the reason.

Well I have done such as videos for a lot of my artists and it has been good. I do it for my company every year. It’s the recap videos for Musichelp.

Still this one are pretty long and more like a info movie. I guess the best one I ever got was Billion Dollar Babies who did a fantastic info video. It's short, contains everything you need to know about Billion Dollar Babies. And it shows exakt what they are all about. This is a perfect teaser.





We did a info about The Magnettes for internal use that Michael Kers created that I really like that one.




I guess that I will get alot of these videos now sent to me. But hey that is great.

You must be flexible.

I was in a meeting today with the Magnettes and we got a gig opportunity on the spot. A gig that happens on Thursday. Even the whole band is not in Stockholm for the moment, Tomas who does some of the tracks and percussion in in Luleå up north in Sweden and can’t really be down on Thursday.

But here is the great by working with a professional group like The Magnettes. They handle that and will fix so they can do the show. It’s not optimal but they do it and the audience will have a blast.

In today’s music market this is a must. Your set up needs to be altered with. If you are six people in your band and there must be a certain equipment and certain light, floor space etc. Well you will miss out so much things that you will never really make it.

Just last week when I saw On-The-Go from Russia and they lost all their gear on the airplane. Well they just borrowed things and did a show (see it on yesterdays post I linked the video). Normally they are very electric with synthesizers. Here was a full acoustic gig. And this was in a showcase situation they have flew over five hours from Moscow to Tel Aviv to play this gig in front of several important buyers from the music industry. I was impressed that they just changed and you could hear how well the songs where in acoustic mode. So even it was not the right show, they convinced me by just not cancel it and not complaining about it.

You can’t expect to have perfect conditions every time when you are a smaller band. Well not even prefect when you have large tours. I got a story when Peter Tosh played for thousands of people in Italy and the power went out. He just took up a guitar and got the audience very silent and kept on playing. It’s a must to be able to do that.

This is the point also when many new artists fall off. I don’t know how many stupid reasons I have heard from bands not taking a gig. I guess the worst one was when the drummer had decided to make laundry with his girlfriend on a Saturday so the band couldn’t take the gig even it was a month notice. In a case like this if the band really want going on, get a substitute drummer. Yes if AC/DC can replace their singer several times you can get a substitute for someone.

Other stupid things has been: Are running a marathon! The place is too small! It’s not a cool venue! We are past playing small events like that! We have lost our electric adapter! The monitors was not loud enough!

Yes I have heard them all during the years. And the only thing that the artists got out of it was that you thought, well they will never make it. And you start to make interest in another artist to bring forward.

Back from Tune In Tel Aviv.

I had a great time on Tune in Tel Aviv. Really great festival and really great conferance. Very high level.

I saw so many cool band. I will put out some videos I always shoot to remeber an artist in my phone.

Nadav Dagon drummer/dj very amuzing and a new direction for DJ:s.


This was a really cool set with Noga Erez


Sivan Levy on the conferance ground.


Billy and The Firm, punk rock in a punk rock place.


I really liked Yuar. Also thanks for the translation later in the evening.


Feher did a great show on Kuli Alma


On-The-Go lost their instruments on the flights. So here is a really special acoustic show.


This was really a highlight during the festival. And here you also see Kosha "Pickles" Dillz on a rap.


Cherrie & Renno is so weird but good.


Direct from Live at Heart was The Vanjas from Sweden.


Garden City Movement. Was cool.


Ouzo Bazooka was the last band out. Well 70:s rock usually not my cup of tea.

Don't pay money for bad education.

It’s really scary when you see people paying a lot of money for education in the music industry and after a couple of year’s education don’t know the difference between a record label and a publisher. Neither see the difference between a master owner and publishing rights.

I bump into these people from time to time and I’m really bored to have to explain the most foundation there is in the music industry. Sure artist asking this question is totally fine. But a person that has spent over three years in education it’s really not acceptable.

The sad thing is that these people goes out to artists and actually claim that they have knowledge. Also they get artists really bad deals and really bad experience about the industry. They also make a fool about themselves, they usually fuck up things on the first try.

I say it again, if the education dosen't is part of the Universitys in Sweden and you have to pay for the education, you might don't get what you need (and as usual i'm not allowed to tell you wicth educations that really sucks, but send me a message and I will).

I wrote about this a year ago if you need advice to choose education. Unfortunally it is in Swedish.

http://ihuvudetpaenar.blogspot.se/2016/01/utbildningar.html

No vlog

Here is the explanation why it's slow this week.

Vad gör man inte för lite PR!

Mediahora sig är ett uttryck som många gånger nämns i branshen. Många gånger fattar inte publiken hur det går till och de flesta artister fattar det inte heller. PR maskineriet är ibland väldigt desperata och kan hitta på det mesta. Här är ett exempel från förra veckan där Anton Ewald släpper ny singel.

http://www.expressen.se/noje/anton-ewald-drabbad-av-akut-njurstensanfall/

Se hur det är utformat. Javisst han har fått ett njurstensanfall, det är inget trevligt, jag vet jag har själv haft det och det gör ont ( dock är det en barnlek i jämförelse med ett ordentligt giktanfall).
Fast det är mest en ursäkt för att PR staben ska skicka ut ett pressmeddelande ( nej journalister sitter inte och följer kändisars twitter uppdateringar, inte i Antons kaliber). Här kom säkerligen tipset från PR maskinen att kolla in Antons twitter.

Vad som troligtvis har hänt är att Antons nya singel inte har fått det mottagande som de velat och då drar de till med vad som helst. Jag kan glatt erkänna att jag skulle själv gjort likadant, så Antons PR team är på tårna. Vad som är intressant är hur publiken fortfarande duperas av sånt här.

Se på artikeln, Typ en rad och njurstenen, resten är om hans nya singel. Sen lägger man in att hans PR grejer i USA skulle ju kunna vara hotade. Jomen tjena! Anton (som han numera kallar sig) har inget i USA att göra. Knappast några större grejer som görs kring en sådan här idol/melodifestival pryl. Utan det här är Pr för att vi i Svedala ska tro att han är stor och kommer göra bra ifrån sig "over there".
Allt görs väldigt klart när man ser vart hans lyssnar är på Spotify, Stockholm, Göteborg, Malmö, Helsingborg, Kristianstad. Känns jäkligt USA det där.

Det här har vi sett så jäkla många gånger. Folk går ju på att Molly och Danny verkligen hade något på G i USA. Nej de sändes dit för att skriva svenska låtar (hur annars kom de hem och släppte ett album direkt på svenska tror ni?). USA var PR för Sverige än idag har ingen jäkel hört talas om dem i LA. I alla fall ingen med inflytande. Deras Spotify talar också sitt tydliga språk Molly Stockholm, Göteborg, Malmö, Oslo, Helsingborg...ja hon är ju lite av ett Norge skämt. Danny då, Stockholm, Göteborg, Malmö, Helsingborg, Uppsala.....

Samma med Agnes när skivbolaget hade glömt bort att hon existerade. Hon kuskade runt på lite shoppingmalls och sjöng till playback. För det kallade Expressen igår att hon hade en internationell karriär. Hur är det med Agnes stora lyssnare internationellt?  Stockholm, Göteborg, Malmö, London, Helsingborg. Kors i taket en stad utanför norden. Den ligger dock inte i USA.

 Tyvärr det här är PR när det inte finns så mycket att ta på. Något man ofta får förskräckta miner från artister när man berättar om hur det verkligen gick till. Så när Malin Collin tror att Tove Lo bestämmer själv vad hon gör, då blir det väldigt roligt.
http://www.expressen.se/noje/kronikorer/malin-collin/collin-vilken-moralpanik/
Tove Lo:s siffror är antagligen dåliga så de gör ett desperat försök att köra henne på Idol (vilket en artist i hennes kaliber inte brukar göra). De bestämmer sen att hon ska göra lite saker så det twittras om henne. Det här med att hon visar tuttarna verkade ju inte gå hem i USA ingen fattade varför. Just Tove Lo blev ju lägligt sjuk på den förra turnén då biljettförsäljningen sviktade rejält på slutet, I klartext hon får göra som hon vill så länge hon säljer. Hon kanske inte skulle ha haft stolpskottet Erik Hassle som förband.

Apropå Hassle, han bor ju i USA och spelar för fullt. Lite mer äkta USA satsning kanske. Fast vi kollar hans Spotify. Stockhol, Göteborg, Köpenham, Malmö, Lund.
Ja det är ingen som har hört om honom heller i de beslutande leden. Kanske han kan få ett njurstensanfall?

Varför är man med i Idol?

Just nu går Musikerförbundet ut med de dåliga villkor som Idol deltagarna har.
http://www.musikerforbundet.se/7-aktuellt/482-idoldeltagarnas-usla-villkor.html
Inget nytt under solen. Vad som skulle diskuteras är hur snabbt de faller i glömska och att Idol faktiskt är ett tv format inte så mycket med verkligheten att göra. Det är väl trots allt lätt att sparka på ett TV format som håller helt på att gå ur tiden (varför gör de en säsong av Idol för? vem tittar? Siffrorna talar sitt tydliga språk)

De som jobbar i de här formaten är faktiskt inte så mycket del av musikbranschen. Eller jo de är de men de tillhör en lägre serie. Lite som att jämföra allsvenskan med premier league. De som jobbar här åker som oftast på mediahora bussen (buss nummer 4 för er som inte bor i Stockholm) och har väldigt lite med musikbranschen att göra.

Samtidigt mina erfarenheter med musikerförbundet är att de oftast håller samma låga nivå som de som gör Idol.

För idols fördel, den reklamtid man åtnjuter kan man faktiskt få in pengar på. Kontrakten är inte så svåra att ta sig ur (jag har själv hjälpt folk ur dessa kontrakt). Att någon skulle få stanna de 10 år som optionerna gäller är väldigt osannolikt.
Trots allt i många av de här fallen så är nog Idol den ända vägen in i musikbranschen, ett försöka att ta en genväg.

Sen att de inte får välja bolag är också för och nackdel, mest nackdel men en del av spelet för att få tittarna att tro att det är på riktigt.

Den ultimata frågan är ju: om man har riktig talang och verkligen vill jobba i musikbranschen varför är du då med i Idol?

Här är lite mer Idol grejer
http://ihuvudetpaenar.blogspot.se/2015/12/idol.html
http://ihuvudetpaenar.blogspot.se/2016/01/idol-juryn.html

Don't fake your numbers

I'm going through demos for them moment. And I guess I will write a lot around mistakes during a presentation to professional people in the industry.

I got one here that started off pretty good, but she was telling how she had over 100 000 streams on her first self-released album. Okay the album is over 4 years old so 100 000 streams into 9 songs is actually not that of an eye catcher.

I went into her Spotify and checked it out. And it looked odd. Yes she had 9 songs with around 10000 streams each. But that was the problem. All songs had around 10000 to 13000 streams. If you look on a normal famous artist on Spotify for example Tegan and Sara. Their top five songs looks like

Closer 32 million
Where does the good go  14 million
100x  2,7 milion
boyfriend  5,1 million
Everyhting is AWESOME!!!! 11million

Yes these five are hits but they have different amount of streams. If you take a one hit wonder like Vanilla Ice it looks like.

Ice Ice Baby 44 million...and then it's Ice Ice Baby
in different versions (different ISRC kodes).

So other songs is
Play that funky music 460 000 streams
Baby Got Back 690 405 streams
You dropped a bomb on me 272 139 streams
Jump Around 282 638 streams

So not over a million on the rest of the songs for Vanilla Ice. And that is normal. Usually the singles has more streams then album tracks. So that this has almost exact on all songs just screams fake figures. So I went on to how many listeners the artist has. It was only 20 listeners and they were all from the same city.

So the conclusion is that it´s one person that streams the whole album over and over again (we can just guess who that might be?). Which is not illegal, but today when most things can be cross referenced it's just stupid. Also often i you have an album out the first songs has more streams then the last songs if nothing is promoted.

And to brag about your amount of streams in this way..well not that good.

Let's work togheter, and you do the job!

It feels sometimes like in high school when you did assignments with people. Some never did anything and you had to do all the work and they took all credit for it.

Over the years I have been better and better to just say no to these things. Right now I work with a couple of lovely teams around artists like Mother Mink, Royal Prospect, Like Swimming, The Magnettes and Adée that is working really hard and you become a good team member getting the feeling to get things done.

But outside this I get so many of these offers that we should join forces. But for now I really have stopped sharing my work and my contacts with people that doesn’t give something back.
I just saw one of these offers online that they wanted me to join. And I get the feeling of high school again. But I will say no this time.

It's a diffrence of score and a song.

Usually this is what people does this mistake. Since I got through many demos this week it is a normal thing to see. Most of the time when people talks about "this music is soooo suitable for a movie or a game" it usually kind of slow and contains a lot of strings or mood sounds.

But that is the score. This part is done by a person hired for the game or the movie to do. The Most famous score comes here

As you notice it's going up and down in tempo, build up and more. Usually that I because the music is written along the pictures.

But a song in a movie is a song that fits in. Can be a song to open up a show like this

Still the Friends theme is not that much used in the TV sere itself, which the Star Wars theme is in the Star Wars movies.

So I’m very suspicious when people write that their music is very good for movies or TV series. Specially dark ones. Then I usually get this



And this is one of the rare one that really works. Usually the song should set the tone for a scene. Not for the whole series. So music that is actually good for movie and TV series contains word that are good. Happiness, Money, Winner. Yes songs like We are the champions, Money Money Money with ABBA, stuff like that.




I guess most of the people that say they have songs that are syncable not thinks of ABBA. They thinks more of Twin Peaks but the truth is that ABBA is widely more synced then Twin Peaks.