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Before I Was So Rudely Interrupted...by George Ziemann -- October 4, 2008 Six years ago, I diverted this website from the random stuff I used to write about (family stuff, genealogy, Arizona, humorous rants, and some concert photos) and focused it completely on music. The purpose for this was to concentrate on promoting Hayden's Wall. We had just finished our album, and it was time to try and sell a few copies.
I've got ambition, too, but I've got this weird personal ethics clause that goes way back, which compelled me to avoid the plugs to maintain credibility. I used the publicity instead to argue the position of the indie artist and question the obstacles the RIAA puts in the path of all of us by its anticompetitive activities. I learned a lot in the process and tried to share it with everyone. And that's what we did with the CD, too. We tried to share it with everyone. We put the songs everywhere. My logic at the time, in spite of everything that the RIAA was saying, was that 128k mp3s are inferior substitutes for the original song. They are advertisements for the CD version. In six years, nothing has changed this opinion, although high bitrate mp3s have replaced the CD as the retail product you want people to upgrade to. That's not to say my opinions are impervious to change. At least one of the members of the band signed off on the original mix noting that, "It's only a demo anyway..." I thought he was right. Inside the CD insert, there's a line that says, "To order additional copies of this CD or offer us a ridiculously lucrative record or distribution deal..." We all still believed that the goal was to be "discovered" by a record label, signed to a recording contract, and get our music on the radio. I don't believe any of that anymore. You're better off to keep your rights to your own music instead of signing them away. Be the copyright owner that the RIAA, ASCAP/BMI, the Copyright Office and Congress are so concerned about protecting.
I had mixed feelings about Rhapsody and Napster. I'm not sold on the tethered subscription idea they offer and I'm not a big mobile phone user, so GroupieTunes joins them as shots in the dark. We already had a few low-res songs at AmieStreet. Primarily, I was interested in getting into iTunes, Amazon and Emusic. That's where people are buying music now. We will put 128k mp3s (those ads I was talking about) on the Hayden's Wall page, but I'll leave the 256k versions up until October 15th. And it's not like we haven't given you any other songs to listen to in the meantime, so don't think we're suddenly too cool to give away free tunes. We're just finished giving the Hayden's Wall songs away. That album has paid its dues in the fight against the RIAA and now it has to live or die on its own merits. Now that I'm able to put my music into the fabled retail distribution pipeline, which we've heard about for decades and always been denied access to, the RIAA is no longer in the way. Final obstacle overcome. Looking Back... For one thing, now is the time to go back and resurrect the book project that I posted the initial draft of. Even though I clearly warned at the outset that it was going to disappear, many people have complained about its extended absence. My original premise was wrong, though. I thought that the RIAA's actions were so openly anti-competitive (not to mention stupid) that the government was going to do something about it. Needless to say, that just did not happen. Instead, America turned into some kind of Bizarro World, where logic does not apply and the government is actively trying to "protect" the cartel. My story didn't have an ending, either, at least not a happy one. I still had a few steps to go. Dropping a product into the retail pipeline marks the end of a 36-year quest to do such a thing without signing my life away. Now I've got an ending. And a beginning. I realize that I have established this site as a reference area for RIAA statistics and I'll keep that going. Since sometime in 2003, I have been Google's number one answer to "RIAA statistics." I just checked and the RIAA finally have edged me out for the top slot, which is a very recent development. But I owned it for more than five years and I bet it really pissed them off. I certainly hope so. That was kinda the point. However, this is not what I set out to do. It was all a big accident because I got pissed off when I ran into the RIAA's wall around the retail market. Fortunately, the retail market moved to my side of the wall. If you're young enough that there's always been an Internet, you cannot comprehend the magnitude of what this means to musicians and music. Just 10 years ago, it was virtually impossible for an independent artist to have their music added to the selection available at the world's largest retailers without a substantial investment in physical product, probably months of ass-kissing and begging, and some sort of distribution arrangement with an RIAA member, which is where said ass-kissing and begging is most likely to have taken place, along with the potential for losing ownership of your name and 85 to 100 percent of the cash you generate for the next 7 years. But they only put you through that hell if they like you. A lot. We're covered all that. Repeatedly. Moving Forward... I'm going to be shuffling my priorities at AzOz and get aimed back in the direction I intended. Top priority will be music, not the music business. I'll keep an eye out for important news, but I'm really not too concerned about what they do from here on out. I'm tired of complaining about them. Time to get positive about something. Between Hurricane and the Hurricane Project, we've got the raw elements for another 4 albums and Carl says that November is the target date for the first sessions recording another album's worth of rock tunes. A lot of work there and we were kind of hung up on "what's the point?" for a while just before things changed. There was a year or so where I started looking for those great independent bands that I know are out there and none of us know about. Found quite a few. I'm going to start looking for them again and tell you when I find something I like, without hype or bullshit. For the musicians in the audience, I want to offer some discussion on live sound and recording, share some tips, tricks, rules of thumb, and go over the basic laws of electronics which must be understood to get everything to work properly -- and how to troubleshoot your system when it doesn't. To make up the loss in humor value derived from figuratively whacking the RIAA on the side of the head on a regular basis, well, there's a lot of stupid out there to laugh at. It shouldn't be too hard to find. And maybe some fiction. I'm feeling incredibly creative this year and ready to stretch both musically and in my writing, and am on the lookout for an intellectual challenge, more advertisers, and more reader feedback. Since this is Arizona, I also watch for jaguars, mountain lions, bears, scorpions and rattlesnakes, but that's another story entirely. |
With
that in mind, we are extremely pleased to announce that on or
before October 15, Big City will be available at iTunes,
Amazonmp3, Emusic, Rhapsody, Napster, AmieStreet and Groupie
Tunes.