Happy New Year

Well i'm working on the year movie for Musichelp. I hope to get it out next week. I hope the new chnages we have done the past mounths tale quick effect during 2017.

Well here is last yeasrs Musichelp

Last working houers this year. I'm excited!

Yes I’m doing the last couple of hours before I logg off and will be on next year.

I guess it's the last hours of the old system that we now have spent months to change and launch next week. It will be fun.

Next year will be more selective. Commercials, TV and movies are kind of outdated. Big conferences are out, getting into more local ones. It's the feeling of 2006 all over again. A fresh start with a new thing, but working against old mindsets.

Yes I remember the struggle 2006. The old mindset was still physical products. The ones that spoke about that are now gone from the business. The new one they laugh at are now kings like Spotify.

I guess though that Spotify can easy be the old one gone in 2026. And the people that only talks about playlists will be out of the business by then.

Yes I really feel that I’m on to something new. Back in 2006 it was the new way of making PR through commercials. And yes I made a good thing about it.

I'm excited!

It’s easy to be Star struck.

I just saw some changes that a band went from one label to another label. The interesting here is that I know both labels so I get the story from both sides. Of course the new label is really happy to have this band, the label they left are happy to get rid of them.

And when you look on the information the band gives on their social media it looks like a really good contract. But now when I can get the inside information it doesn’t look that good. Some small paragraphs and owning ow masters will make it difficult to make money for the new label. Also the old label will not give away their fanbase witch was held by them.

I know the band is still stars struck. But I think the honeymoon will be short lived. The things the new label put in is really not that impressive. More like a step backwards for them.

Yes things might look good on the outside looking in, it’s a totally different story when you see the whole picture.

A Managers biggest mistake

I had a meeting with a new manager the other day. This Manager is really hard working and a great person, but was upset that he didn’t get the opportunities for his bands. He was seeking advice how to do it.

The problem is that the bands he has is really not that good. Its average bands that there is thousands of. And the band is really not doing any progress most of the things is the manager who was hard working.

I recognize myself in it when I started my second record label and took in bands that I really liked myself and was busting my ass off to get out there. It never went anywhere and if it was today I don’t think I would have picked them up. This is thing that you learn by mistakes. Today I have much easier to evaluate an artist, some of it has to do with new tools that has gone out the past couple of years. Most is though experience. You just feel when it’s right and when it’s wrong. Sure you did that back then, but you wanted so much to get things right that you just put that aside.

So what to tell the poor dude. I really can’t get to him that the problem is that his darlings is really crap. At the same time I have seen so many good managers leave the industry thinking that is too hard for them, when it actually was wrong with the product, not their work. Which is a shame.

Another sad part is that these bands really don’t appreciate the work that the manager does. I meet one of the members on a Christmas party. And he was more complaining that they were not playing on the biggest festival in Sweden. They only got the second biggest on a small stage.

The truth is that to get this crap band on to a stage at all on top of that on the second biggest festival is more work than putting a man on the moon. They should celebrate their manager as a hero. Instead they were checking out if I could take them to “the next level” instead of the manager.

Most manager mistakes is actually to have crappy bands.

RIP George Michael

No I was never a bigger fan of Wham! or George Michel. But he has done some really iconic songs and was a part of the music I grew up with. Some songs really stuck. I guess 2016 still claims big names. I guess the industry is changing faster because of these people's deaths. Still many died too young.

Don't be like this..

We got this to our record label inbox, Of course I’m censor who it was from. But it's a typical email we get several of every week. People that hasn't done their homework and now face a problem.

Hello my name is *******. This year 2016 I released a cd called ****** . I am
now looking for someone to distribute my new cd.  Jazz/pop rock genrer.
I am from Sweden. I am not a signed artist. I have produced the cd and Swedish
broadcasting Corporation has produced the recording. Which distributors do you prefer ?
I have 900 dvs physical at Home.

Kindly *****

I really don’t know witch planet this person is on. First of all the CD (or is it a DVD look on the last sentance it says dvs...this could easily be DVD:s) is already released. The person has already printed over 900 copies of the shit and now realized that she need a distributor. And since almost every record store is closed in Sweden by know finding distribution for a product like this…well it’s probably smarter to get down and buy 5 tickets to the powerball lottery and actually take out that you are going to win and spend the money beforehand.

Second even though this person printed the CD what’s the deal with the Swedish broadcast cooperation, does it really have all the paper on this? Since they are writing an email like this I wouldn’t trust a word that everything is in its order.

And the genre what is Jazz/pop/rock? I guess this is some stupid Jazz project, the people that plays Jazz usually don’t have any knowledge and should immediately stop giving out music. Jazz is no music is just a sound, not music.

Then to the question: Which distributors do you prefer? What I should just stop what I’m doing and start helping this utterly stupid project. People like this should be stopped by NCB already starting doing stupid things like this.

The thing is also most of this information is online, if you just start to use Google and do some search you will find it EASY! Just hate artist that do stupid stuff and then wants to be curled like a small child.

When you later meet people like this on different kind of meetings they always take up time by complaining that is so hard din the music industry. I guess it becomes harder if you just do it this way.

Merry X-mas

Yes we celebrate X-mas on 24 of dec in Sweden.

Trumps in the Swedish scene.

I guess one of the things I want get rid of is people that says they are one thing and then prove to do another thing. A bit like Julian Assange and Wikileaks.

I'm a bit tired to defend them and be nice to them and watch them destroy things that people build up.

Usually they talk about things, a bit like religion, that yeah we are so nice and friendly. But with them getting power you just discover that the whole thing is built up like Hitlers nazi party. Last time they had a festival that went to hell.

And now I see this people again with government money doing the shit all over again. So should I just tell the truth or just let people know what fraud is to happen is the question.

Well stay away from it, some might say

Yes but at the same time see many good people that are nice get crushed and that will also effect me. The Swedish scene is small so when idiots get in it can effect a lot of things.

Same with a new company going around and tell unknowing government foundations that they should be more open to independent music. They claim to represent the independent music scene with over 300 independent record labels. But when they get paid to do things for all of them they just book their own artists. And no one else can get in.

We have seen it before and it took years to get it right. And now I see this on the horizon again. If we just had enough with that Trump becomes president, we have a bunch of mini Trumps doing shit in the Swedish music climate.

Don’t forget the closest ones.

I really did this mistake a week ago. I forget the people that were closest to the artist. Instead we were just chasing new audience all the time and this day we had a show in their hometown. Since it was kind of close calls we didn’t have time to promote. In the end we didn’t do anything.

Still people that have been fans of the band since the start, the ones you don’t think of suddenly showed up. And what we had forgotten was that we haven’t played there for at least two years.  So when they saw the new show and how much the band has developed they were really excited. You can see that they started to go on social media again and even though we already had them it made a bigger noise.

Yes never forget the ones you already have.

Jobbiga artister undviker man.

Jag såg att de skjutit på dokumentären av Lill Lindfors på framtiden efter en massa strul. Produktionstekniskt strul hävdar de, men i det här fallet kan jag äta upp min gamla trucker-keps på att det hänger ihop med att Lill Lindfors personligen. Anna Wintour (Djävulen bär Prada) är tydligen en kattunge i jämförelse.

Redan för 20 år sedan satt jag på SVT i ett redaktionsmöte för ett populärt tv program. Jag var ny så jag satt mest och lyssnade på när de diskuterade vilka artister och gäster de skulle ha till programmet. Någon föreslog Lill Lindfors.

-           - Nej för i helvete, hon är super jobbig. Hon vill ha ljuset på ett visst sätt, precis som Kim Anderzon har de lärt sig att ett visst ljus döljer rynkorna. Så det blir att ljussätta om hela studion bara för hennes medverkan. Hon ska överse allt vad man gör. Ni får söka ny producent hellre än att ta in Lill i programmet.

Det här var en väldigt lugn producent som nästan aldrig tog sig ton. Men nämna Lill Lindfors var som att svära i kyrkan. Under hela min karriär inom TV så fick jag höra det flera gånger hur de ratade bort henne för hon helt enkelt är för jobbig och har ett kontrollbehov som går mot gränsen till någon bokstavskombination.

Hon var helt enkelt en av dessa artister som man drar sig i det längsta att boka. Visst de blir bokade ändå, oftast av nykomlingar som inte kan historien bakom dem. Fast ryktet går snabbare i många fall så de värsta sakerna hinner stoppas. Själv lyckades jag undvika Lill under TV åren, dock den andra producenten nämnde Kim Anderzon råkade jag ut då vi som gröngölingar gjorde en egen TV serie och någon kom på att intervjua Kim. Under tv seriens två år så var det mardrömsreportaget nummer ett. Man kunde inte filma henne i närbild för då syntes rynkorna. Hon tyckte bakgrunden var för röd så vi fick åka ut två gånger extra för att ta nytt material.

Artister som gör sig omöjliga helt enkelt förlorar uppdrag. Det finns liksom en inbyggd lista inom branschen där du sjunker och får sämre och sämre uppdrag.  Visst det är alltid någon ny som inte vet. De stora jobben försvinner för där finns det alltid de som vet.

Därför är det ingen idé att se dokumentären om Lill. Det kommer vara ett statligt stöd till hennes egen biografi eftersom inget ofördelaktigt kommer slinka förbi hennes kontroll. Kanske kan det bli intressant när hon är död och någon gör en riktigt dokumentär. Även om man inte pratar illa om de död så i Lills fall verkar många kunna göra ett undantag.

Nutcase Monday

Monday…and you get the usual nutheads. There is no point of writing the first email to support on a Friday evening 11pm. Then write mails from different e-mail accounts during Saturday with the same question. Then on Sunday morning write the question again but in a slightly different way, several times. Then on Monday, scream that you don’t get any answers.

The sad part is that the answer is written on the homepage several times on various places.

And no just because you play classical music and is head over a full orchestra gives you the reason to act like a dick head. Actually it’s scary that a person with that occupation doesn’t have the knowledge to send a Wav file instead of a MP3 (198 kb/s).

Yes it’s Monday.

Why this shit tradition Sweden

A lot of travel this week. I’m going to all over south of Sweden. It will be fun if it’s not a snowstorm. Well it’s Lucia today as well. I don’t know but that means all stupid people with small kids that never drives should drive on the roads.

Yes Lucia a kind of a Scandinavian thing. I guess they have it in Italy as well. What it is, that the small kids dress up in a nightgown and sing songs that really makes no sense (we don’t give a shit if Staffan was a groom) . The teenager sees an opportunity to get hell of a drunk. And most adults hate it, except those who has small children, it get back to that. And really old people that shit them self’s and really don’t know where they are, well they just have to witness the whole thing whether they like or not.

Also kind of tradition that Lucia is a blond girl with long hair. I don’t know why, St Lucy that celebrates was Italian. And they usually are black haired. Especially in the dark ages. A department store had a pictures of a black kid ( can’t really tell if it is a she or he) as Lucia and who Sweden went ballistic. Some was really against it, some thought it was really good.

This is so Sweden. Things like this occupy their brains. That a totally maniac called Donald Trump is doing things or that children in Africa starve. No no that doesn’t bother the Swedish people. No if Lucia should be a boy or a girl or be Chinese or Italian that they can debate.

They really don’t see the bigger picture. That today it will impossible to reach people because they have taken the day off to see their damn children in a nightgown singing bad songs. And they will block the whole damn city with their cars. And yesterday they shut down the food store to have damn Lucia in it. Can’t you see what it actually does….spread diseases! Yes that was going on. All these kids will get a hell of a chance to spread germs to the adults and then all Sweden has the flu until x-mas.

It happens every year. At least in the good old days the kids had real candles and something could at least get on fire. But they have even taken off that tradition.

Old farts and their record labels

Sometimes you get in artists that really just was famous for one song in the early 90:s bust still think they should be treated like a star. Yes you should drop all the work you are doing to handle whatever insignificant problem that artist has. Most problems are like, I don’t get any gigs can you get me gigs! How do I get same listeners as this artist, we are you in the same age (make reference to an artist that actually made more hits and still today are something to recon with)! It was better in the old days then you really made money out of music!

Of course is this problem that the artist is lazy and the new system actually demands that you work. And in many cases they have opened record labels themselves, since really no one wants to work with them. But they only want to have a label, doing the work and take responsibility. So the conversation goes.

-        -  I want to get out this record, how do I do it?

-          -You upload it on the webpage under your account.

-        -  That is much work; can you do it for me?

-        -  Well if you pay me extra. But you have to send me the codes like ISRC and EAN/UPC.

-          -How do I get those? Can you do that for me?

-        -  Well not really, to be safe you should have them yourself.

-         - Yes it needs to be safe, all the money should go to me, I own everything.

-        -  Yes and the safest is that you have the songs registered so you have the codes.

-         - It’s so much trouble. Can you do it?

So you fix it for them. You tell them what you do and where to get the money afterwards.  Five years later or more they popup and screams, where is my money? Of course they never went to the places you told them. They didn’t do the things that were necessary. And once again they think that you should just drop everything you have going to help them with their not really problem.

There is a reason why I don’t listen to people talking about the old times, I just despise them. Luckliy there are good old artist as well, but they talk future and work hard.

Sunkit

Whooopla. My friend Burt von Bolton has a really cool club called Sunkit (translated...well googel translate says Trashy, but it has nothing to do with Trash metal.). It's a club where they play all these songs you just wonder why someone put them out. And had the guts to do it.

The club is always packed and it's really great. The thing is that he also feed us in the facebook feed with stuff that is just so good. This came today.



This is the real "Sunkit". I love it, made my day. I will just take another rom and coke and listen to demos.

Here is some other great feauters from Sunkit, unfortunaly most of the really good ones are in swedish. So here enjoy this friday.

Stupid imature people

I want to give out my music and someone should fix that for me. I really don’t want to investigate how it’s done I just want it done and then I should make a lot of money.  But my music sucks so badly that no one wants to give it out. In the past then it was tough luck. The good part was that the system was not flooded with stupid people that throw their hands in the air confronted with any obstacle.

Internet changed all that. Today it’s not even hard to get out your music. But what has surpassed the artist is that you have legal responsibility if you give out music. Even worse you have to think. And in my daily job you have a clear view that quite many don´t think at all, they really think that giving out music is like doing a facebook post.

First they complain that is hard to understand (which is not, it’s really not harder than third grade in school), especially when almost everything is written online how to do it. Then of course they take the easy way out and then complain that they are getting fooled by not secure their rights. Since the smart system that actually works you need to think what you are doing.

I don’t know how many times a day I just think: well you should not give out music at all.

And really it should have been this way. If really no one accepts the artist believes in the music, it actually should not go out. What happens is that all systems are clogged with music that really no one wants to hear. Many complained that the record labels was the gatekeepers, and record labels complained that radio/media was the gate keepers. But it really assured that most of the shit was not out there.

And what is out there is a bunch of people that won’t take any responsibility and just complains that their music is not much listen to as Madonnas.  And they really don’t want to do anything to get people to listen, maybe because it sucks.

The Mommyheads tells how it is. At least they are a great people and do great music.

Are Guns 'n' Roses uncool or my phone company hip?

I just got a message from my phone company that I can buy cheaper tickets to see Guns ’n’ Roses in Sweden this summer. I spoke to the guy that handles some of Coachella where Guns ‘n’ Roses was first booked as a reunion. He just smiled and said it was not worth the money for booking them.

And I’m bit puzzled. Has Guns ‘n’ Roses become so unhip they use my phone company to get out there. Or is my phone company hip to choose a real cool band to advertise with?

Usually around x-mas you see all kind of uncool companies do Christmas shows with artists that you wonder where they are the rest of the year.  And it’s the most uncool names you can come up with that going to sing Christmas songs when your company has a Christmas dinner and you need to get really really drunk to just bear with it.

In Sweden you know that an artist is so out when they play on these Christmas things or play on the cruise ships between Sweden and Finland, if it’s not a special arrangement, there are cool cruises with special themes like the Punk boat and so on.

Well I would like to see Guns ‘n’ roses. I have never seen to original lineup play (but bought condoms with Slash on Stringfellows in London and party with the rest of the band...it's a totally another story). But how long do I have to wait for Axl to get on the stage? Well the date they play here I’m in USA seeing the next Guns ‘n’ Roses.

Monday again

 It’s Monday again. One of these Mondays where you planned to get things done but the phone kept your busy so now you have o do a couple of hours overtime or push things forward.  

So it’s no wonder why you use the holidays for doing extra things. Sending those emails that never was sent but you really wanted to send.  And we are close by to one of these breathing holes in my schedule. 

It could have been worse...

Yes I said that eurovision song contest in Sweden was like take a dump and then whipe your ass with the shit. Well I just realized that if Anna Book was in, it also ment to eat that shit afterwards. And if there was a song written by author that writes really bad crime fiction (hello Camilla Smäckberg) then you had to put that shit back in all your body openings. So yeah it could have been much worse.

My next wonder if the Swedish musicians union will go on strike on Eurovision like the threat to do on idol. I mean this is as bad killing dreams of young musicians as the idol. Or even worse in idol they get flogged afterwards. Here they get flogged before, during and after.

Well eurovision will run more seasons so I guess the union really don't dare to get into that conflict.