viva música!

Nation Beat plays with Willie Nelson!

Sometimes Lightning does strike!! Musician friend Scott Kettner who is leader of the group Nation Beat was featured on an NPR segment in August about Nation Beat's new CD "Legend's of The Preacher". But I'll let Scott tell this story in his own words...

Willie Nelson + Nation Beat: "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain

"The same night that this piece ran I got an email from a stranger with no subject.  The email read something like "Hi...I'm Willie Nelson's manager.  I want to talk to you about the Farm Aid concert in September.  Please call me".  I thought it was a prank so I googled the guys name and sure enough it was Willie's manager.  I called him immediately.  He said he had heard the piece on NPR and that he hadn't heard a band so original in a very long time and that he was now a Nation Beat fan.  He told me that he knew Willie would love us and would want us to perform at Farm Aid and that Willie would like to sing 2 songs with us.  As I tried to keep myself from crapping my pants I thanked him and told him that we were available for the date.

"Two days later Willie's manager called me again to inform me that he had just got off the phone with Willie and that he had downloaded the CD and listened to the whole thing in his tour bus.  He said that Willie loved our CD and would love to have us perform at Farm Aid and would also love to come sing 2 songs with us!  Holy Shit!!  That's all I could say!!

"As you all know...Willie is an American music icon.  He has crossed genre's and redefined American Country music for a span of over 40 years. I grew up listening to Willie...."On the Road Again"..."Mamma's don't Let Your Baby's Grow Up to be Cowboys" were theme songs from my youth.  Getting the stamp of approval from such a great artist is something that one can only dream of.  This band (Nation Beat) has worked soooo hard over the past 6 years.  All the guys have dedicated much of their lives and sacrificed so much but for such little monetary return so often.  Having this stamp of approval from Willie makes all those hard years more than worth it!  This might just be one of the greatest moments in our (my) career thusfar."

As the above video shows The concert happened on September 20th. Check out Nation Beat's Music here

Samba Tremeterra Live at Sound Session

On the 12th of July the group Samba Tremeterra performed at Sound Session - the genre defying music festival in Providence Rhode Island. I was there with my video camera to capture their set on the main stage before many thousands. I managed to catch the entire set of Tremeterra's dancers performing in the street!!

I was really surprised and impressed by the Sound Session Festival scene in Providence. This was one large outdoor party and had a wonderful carnaval-like feel to it complete with a parade through the downtown streets.

Learn more about Samba Tremeterra.

Music Festivals are Mushrooming and Going Green

Partly because of our changing music tastes, partly because of shifts in the music industry and maybe we're starting to catch up with Europe -- North America has caught festival fever this summer. Dozens of fests -- multiple-day events with a sprawling array of artists -- decorate the 2008 concert landscape, many of them first-time entrants on the scene.

For example, the inaugural Rothbury Festival, will run July 3 - July 6 with an eclectic bill that ranges from jammy headliners such as Dave Matthews Band and Trey Anastasio to boutique artists such as offbeat rapper Sage Francis and psychedelic rockers the Secret Machines.

With about 200 acres set off for camping on the Double JJ Ranch, 25 miles north of Muskegon, Michigan most Rothbury attendees will be roughing it at an environmentally conscious event whose aim is to "build a durable social movement," as one official describes it.

Organizer, Sarah Haynes, was quoted in Fast Company as saying:  "The Rothbury Festival is our most ambitious project featuring everyone from Dave Matthews to Snoop Dogg. We're sourcing everything green, from cups and plates to food, and we're recycling and composting. We're also encouraging fans to pay an extra $3 per ticket, for carbon offsets. Or they can pay an extra $7, which adds in the cost of buying solar panels for the local school."

It's destination festivals, such as Rothbury, that are catching up with the legacy set long ago by events such as Woodstock and the Monterey Pop Festival. Rothbury producer Jeremy Stein cites three big factors in the resurgence: concertgoers' frustration with clinical, corporate environments at the summer sheds; production advances that allow for more fan-friendly fest experiences, and the diversified music tastes that come with the iPod era.

One big difference from the Woodstock days: A sense of festival community is already building at Rothbury message boards and other online sites -- many of them created by fans. Among the travelers will be James Bricker of Houston, a frequent festivalgoer who says Rothbury is a perfect fit for his blend of "hippie rock and indie music scene" tastes.

Bricker was quoted in the Detroit Free Press as saying, "When they come to meet, they find out they've already got a really good friend. The music is always your big draw. But it's also the gathering aspect that matters -- it's 40,000 like-minded people wanting to have a good time together. That sense of community is a huge thing."

Rothburyfestival.com

Return to Calabash...

 

How Did Lil' Wayne's New Release become a GIANT HIT?

“Tha Carter III”,  the new album by the rapper Lil Wayne, just became a rare blockbuster hit. The album sold 423,000 copies on June 10, its day of release, according to Billboard, and it is predicted that first-week sales will near one million. (The last time an album broke the million barrier was in 2005, when “The Massacre” by 50 Cent sold 1.1 million copies in its first week.)

So how did this happen? Lil' Wayne (whose real name is Dwayne Carter Jr.), has not put out an album with a label since 2005 -- but he kept the attention of fans by releasing mixtapes and rapping on dozens of songs by stars like Usher and Chris Brown. He built a reputation as one of the most prolific performers in hip-hop.

Producing lots of 'bootleg' releases seems to have worked as the scores of songs that reached listeners on mixtapes and peer-to-peer file-sharing networks fueled anticipation for an official release. This seems to have translated into considerable fan loyalty because although “Tha Carter III” was leaked online several weeks ago, many fans have decided to buy the CD.

Before you get the idea that this happened only because of the new 'digital revolution', traditional marketing still played a significant role in the album's success. Robert Levine from the New York Times wrote, "Even in this era of mixtapes and MP3s, however, it took an old-fashioned summer radio hit to market Lil Wayne beyond his dedicated fan base of young men. “Lollipop,” one of the album’s singles, is No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, where it has spent several weeks, in part because it also appeals to women."

Sean Fennessey, the music editor at Vibe, was quoted as saying, "I don’t think Middle America got interested in him because his mixtapes were so great, but they forced serious rap fans to care about everything he was doing. Then he landed on a pop hit with ‘Lollipop,’ which was something he had never been able to do before. And between that and the serious rap fans, it became an event.”

According to BigChampagne, a company that tracks peer-to-peer online activity, Lil Wayne was the most pirated artist on file-sharing networks this past spring. Fans who downloaded Lil Wayne songs took an average of 10 of his tracks; fans of other pop artists only took an average of two per act.

Eric Garland, BigChampagne’s chief executive says: “That speaks to the quantity of his output, which is plentiful, as well as the depth of his audience’s engagement. If you’re a fan, you’re most likely a serious fan. And while people who like an individual song are not going to open their wallets for you, people who like 10 songs will. I think the mixtape phenomenon is great for feeding the machine, which is what the music industry is about in the 21st century.”

“Tha Carter III” was also promoted with television advertising and partnerships with MySpace, Yahoo and America Online, and iTunes briefly offered a new song weekly. In addition to the album’s success, “Lollipop” is now the best-selling ring tone of 2008.

TecnoBrega and a New Business Model for Music

Wired Magazine's cover story: FREE, by Chris Anderson, explores how the pricing of products from every digital business are headed towards $0.00. Somewhere in the middle of the story Chris mentions street vendors in Sao Paulo, Brazil who are selling "tecnobrega" CDs that, like most CDs sold on the street, did not come from a label.

Instead, they come directly from new bands, with names like Banda Calypso, who distribute masters of its CDs and CD liner art to street vendor networks in towns it plans to tour, with full agreement that the vendors will copy the CDs, sell them, and keep all the money. It turns out that this is OK for the band because the super-cheap CDs act  as great promotion and regularly help to sell out shows of 5,000 people or more.

But Tecno Brega as a music movement did not start in Sao Paulo.  It's birth actually happened in the unlikely city of Belem in the North of Brazil.  Tecno Brega means 'cheesy beats' and the music involves some very creative sampling from mostly 80's pop tunes.  Several hundred new Tecno Brega records are produced and released every year by local artists, with both the production and distribution taking place outside of the mainstream music industry.

In the documentary film 'Good Copy Bad Copy', Renaldo Lemos -- who is Director of the Center for Technology & Society and also the Project Lead for Creative Commons, Brazil, explains the model:

"In the North of Brazil, you have the Techno Brega movement. You have a music producer who has a recording studio. Probably a small one with good equipment. They invite the artists to these studios to make the CDs. They deliver it to the street vendors, so that they can replicate them. The only people making a profit out of CD sales are the street vendors. The musicians don't expect any money from releasing the CDs."

Renaldo continues: "The 'aparelhagem' or the sound system, is an important element in Techno Brega culture. The different sound systems complete against each other, about who has the most cutting-edge updated equipment. They already realize that CDs are not a good business model. CDs are merely an advertisement. They organize parties in weekends where you have 5000 people coming. Then you make money."

 

The tecno brega model is simple: the music lies outside the realm of traditional copyright and is used as a method of marketing events. Every weekend “sound system” parties attract thousands of people to the outskirts of Belem to listen to the Tecno Brega music. The parties are advertised by the distribution of the music itself. The numbers are incomplete, but the Belem scene alone brings in yearly revenues of several million US dollars.

Chris Anderson notes: "free is not quite as simple — or as stupid — as it sounds. Just because products are free doesn't mean that someone, somewhere, isn't making huge gobs of money".

In order for this model to work the music has to reach out to everyone. So, the street vendors (who we would call "pirates") have the freedom to copy and sell thousands of CDs in cheap prices and they become the good guys. In this ecosystem, the sound system show producers are happy, the artists are happy, street vendors are happy and super cheap CDs make everyone else happy. And copyright? It's been thrown out with the bath water...

Last year I was lucky enough to attend the PortoMusical conference in Recife, Brazil. Each day of the conference I would emerge onto the street in company with several music industry delegates and bump into street vendors who were hawking CDs. There was quite a bit of joking about what these vendor's might think if they knew who they were trying to sell their products to as we walked by. But it turns out the joke was on us... Here we flown in from North America and Western Europe to ostensibly help Brazilian musicians learn how to 'make it' in the music business. It now seems that they might well have hired one or two of these street vendors to teach us a trick or two.

return to Microfundo...

 

Playlist: Peacemaking in Iraq - The Impossible Love?

Listen To Playlist: 'Respect for the People of Iraq'

Possibly one of the most hopeful events to come out of Iraq just came to pass last month in Finland. Padraig O'Malley, academic, author, and peacemaker, organized a meeting of 36 Iraqi leaders from across the Iraq's sectarian divide - Sunni, Shia, and Kurd. Flown from Baghdad to an undisclosed location in Helsinki, O'Malley described the meeting as, "The most powerful group of Iraqis ever gathered outside of Iraq to talk about peace and finding a way forward together."

The initiative, which has become known as the Iraq Project, was launched as a common effort by UMass-Boston, the Institute for Global Leadership at Tufts University, and the Crisis Management Initiative out of Helsinki.

Here is the cool part: O'Malley, who has worked to bring warring factions in Northern Ireland also invited Martin McGuinness, a former Irish Republican Army commander, to chair this weekend's meetings.

Martin McGuinness, who now serves as the leading member in the Irish National Assembly and as a government minister was joined by Jeffrey Donaldson, a leader in one of the major Irish protestant parties, the Democratic Unionist Party. Both McGuinness and Donaldson, who once saw each other as mortal enemies, are sharing their own improbable story of reconciliation -- and are helping the Iraqis see, through their example, that it is possible to reach across years of hatred and bloodshed and find a way to work together. 

"Think about it," O'Malley said. "Now two people from Northern Ireland who just a decade ago wouldn't fly on the same plane . . . are working jointly to share their story with the Iraqis and tell them how they now work together in the same government."

One of the most promising outcomes of this weekend's meetings is that the Iraqi's have taken ownership of the process and have a greed to meet again in Baghdad for the first time within the next three months -- and have invited the two Irishmen to help them work through their differences.

So far this  exercise in unconventional diplomacy has been funded by a single trustee of Tufts University. Calabash offers this playlist of Iraqi music as a way forward to support this peace process. Calabash will donate all of the net revenue we recieve to O'Malley's efforts.

Please share this post and playlist - This effort of citizen diplomacy could bring lasting peace in Iraq. (Imagine if somehow we could get all the Clinton & Obama supporters, who have given online donations, to buy this playlist - what that could do to bring peace in Iraq.)

One of the artists featured on this playlist, Kazem Al Saher, who lives in exile in Cairo, is the top selling singer in the Arab music world. At the time of the American invasion of Iraq he led an American tour called 'The Impossible Love'. Kazem has played major US concerts for Arab people living in America, but few other Americans know him. Today, the distance between Iraq and the United States is as great as that between the rival clans in Shakespeare's tragedy, which as we know was not only about love.

Listen To Respect for the People of Iraq

Read More about the Iraq Project

Padraig O'Malley, Iraq Peace, Iraq Project, Helsinki

Leningrad Cowboys & Red Army Choir

Talk about a cultural exchange! Consider the Finnish rock band called The Leningrad Cowboys. They held a concert in Russia, to the screaming applause of Russkie teen-agers - PLUS they got the Red Army Choir to join them on stage for a performance of "Sweet Home Alabama." - in English!

You couldn't make this up. Back in the days of the Soviet Union, the Soviet Red Army had an official choir composed of male soldiers and musicians. It still exists. The Red Army Choir performs throughout Russia to this day.

I was spellbound by the video - having never even heard of the Leningrad Cowboys and had NO idea what to expect. What makes me smile is the idea that such a concert took place. So this is what world peace looks like...?

Steve Jobs & Me

I'm the same age as Steve Jobs. Well, in the interest of full disclosure, he is, actually, one year younger than me.

And we've been living in a sort of parallel universe. We're both entrepreneurs who have been driven to significantly change the music industry.

He is, of course, the CEO and founder of Apple and I am the not-quite-as-well-known CEO and founder of Calabash Music (which is kind of like itunes but really not).

Steve has built a hugely successful computer company (well, now an electronics company). But I want to talk about music -- which is what Steve and I have in common.

Steve moved into the music world by successfully grabbing an 85% share of the market in selling music downloads through itunes and the ipod. But, Apple is really not a music company. And for all the changes that have come to the music industry from the Internet and digital technology (and Steve Jobs making his deals with all the major labels) this so-called 'change' has been business-as-usual for the musicians. Almost all the money spent on itunes still goes to the labels or to Steve Jobs and his shareholders...

For the musicians nothing has changed. itunes is just a giant, long tail aggregator in which the individual artist gets lost in a huge jungle.

--

In my parallel universe, I've been exploring pathways with Calabash that move away from the old models of the music industry. Away from models that for most musicians either leaves them out or leaves them broke or both. 

The first point of departure is to get off the 'American Idol', hit-driven, mentality. Getting a hit is like winning the lottery -- it's theoretically possible but the odds are against it. And it's just not a realistic goal for all but a handful of musicians.

The average musician doesn't need 20,000 friends on Myspace -- who are mostly there to check each other out. Instead they need to build a relationship with a much smaller core group of fans who will support them in everything they do. Kevin Kelly, who's from Wired magazine, put it exactly right when he recently wrote a piece called  '1,000 True Fans'.

His idea is that If you define your core fan as someone who is willing to give up a day's wage (say - $100) over a year, then if you build a community of 1,000 core fans, you'll earn $100,000 each year from this group. And start making a decent living as an artist!!

So, the question that I've been asking is: what would happen if you created a place online for artists to gather their core fans and then added micro-financing -- a simple to use platform that would let artists raise money for their next recordings directly from their fans?

All of a sudden you're letting music fans -- people like you -- become co-producers of new works of art. You get to interact directly with your favorite musicians within a social network -- and you can offer micro-funding in return for advance copies of new recordings that are currently in production.

Instead of getting new music through the old-school distribution/retail channels (who, by-the-way, take all your money) -- your support, and your money, goes directly to the artists. In the Calabash model when you micro-fund an artist's new recording, they retain ownership and control of the music and they get all of your money. (minus a small 3% transaction fee taken by paypal). Once the new recording is released, the artists earn 70% of their download sales when it is sold at CalabashMusic.com. This is not business as usual!!

There's an artist here in Boston, whose name is Mieka Pauley, who raised money for her latest recording this way. She set up several categories of sponsorship on her web site. If you gave Mieka $10 -- you got a download copy of her new album. If you gave Mieka $25 --  you got the album plus tickets to her next show. Give her $1,000 and she'd come play in your living room. Mieka raised $16,000 from 300 fans doing this. And 7 people gave her $1,000 each!! This entirely covered the cost of her new recording.

And in the micro-financing model -- you don't have to stop with your dollars. This is about building community between you and the artists and you and all the other music heads like you.

Steve Jobs and itunes is selling something like 5 million songs a day -- if somehow you (and the itunes crowd) got off of itunes for just one day -- and decided to microfund new recordings by some of the most talented, gifted and rare artists on the planet -- you would fund and co-produce (and get your own copy of ) their next recording -- and in one day, you would entirely change (dare I say revolutionize) the music industry.

And it really is about you and the artists. This is not my revolution. It's certainly not Steve Jobs revolution. He's thinking about the next iphone. He's not thinking about the next creative music group coming out of places like Buenos Aires or Berlin or here in Boston. It's just not on his mind.

But you! If you're a true music head (a.k.a. true fan) -- then this is what you care about! As a group, you can get behind the most creative musicians in the world, you can co-produce their next work and you can build a creative relationship with them throughout their entire careers.

Now all this stuff is brand new. We're calling Calabash's approach to micro-financing music: Tune Your World. And if you show up at TuneYourWorld.com, it's so new, you can still be one of the first members.

• You can entirely change the life of a great musician
• You can co-produce their new recordings
• You can start going to live shows that now are going to be part of your community -- where you know the artists and many of the fans
• And what else can you do? Come on -- you tell me...

This is about totally changing the music world as we know it! and to quote a newly famous politician -- "This is change you can believe in"!

www.tuneyoureworld.com

-- Brad Powell (brad at CalabashMusic dot com)

Soulfege Band Leader, Derrick Ashong, speaks his support for Barak Obama

On Jan. 31, Derrick Ashong, a 32-year-old musician and leader of the band Soulfege,  was carrying a sign for Barak Obama outside the Hollywood theater at the Democratic primary debate taking place that day.

Derrick's sign said “¡Sí, se puede!” (Yes, we can!), and he joined a crowd milling around in the street. Then a guy carrying a video camera came by and began asking Derrick a series of very pointed questions about why he supported Barak Obama.

“So why are you for Obama?” he asked. It was clear from his approach that he expected a shallow answer.

As it turned out, Derrick was glad to be asked, and held forth for almost six minutes — which is a very long time for regular broadcast television. — on universal health care, single-payer approaches and public-private partnerships.

Now this may seem like what could have been rather dull fare but here’s the unusual part: On Feb. 2, the video interview was posted on a YouTube channel called “The Latest Controversy,” where supporters of both Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Senator Obama are asked very aggressively to justify their choice of candidates.

The video blew up, drawing more than 850,000 views. And after getting such a large response Derrick decided to post his own follow-up video that was posted Feb. 11 and received  300,000 views.

So here is an independent musician, who was looking to (anonymously) show support for a candidate, drawing more than a million views with an impassioned but reasoned pitch.

Derrick clearly appealed to the youth movement that is shaking up the 2008 campaign. While his video could have been lost among the YouTube clutter, an editor at The New York Times heard about it and — a Youtube hit was made.

Part of what happened is that the original video was contrary in format to the 'regular' sound bite news format. Neither party played by the rules. The journalist is never seen and is extremely aggressive in asking questions, while Derrick, does not so much take the bait as reel in the guy setting it out there. It is a classic viral moment. Derrick was quoted by the New York Times, saying: 

“Certain types of discourse are better suited to the Web. There has been so much talk about how this campaign is all about style and no substance, and this video contradicts that. There are reasons that we support Obama, and it has to do with the issues. You can’t get that on CNN right now, you can’t get that on MSNBC right now, and young people saw it on YouTube and they took it.”

It turns out that three of the dozen most popular videos on YouTube this month are about Barack Obama, not Paris or Lindsay or Britney. As noted in the NY Times:

"Many long-held beliefs are taking a beating during this election, chief among them the idea that if you want to connect with young people, you’d best keep it short, funny and stupid."

Thanks to Derrick and the Soulfege crew for exploding this myth...

Learn more about Soulfege

1,000 True Fans to Launch our Music Microfunding Platform!

What's the solution for how to survive as a struggling musician in the 21rst Century?

According to Wired Magazine editor Kevin Kelly's article, 1,000 True Fans,  an artist needs to find only 1,000 core fans -- defined as those who will buy everything produced by the artist. If each 'True Fan' is willing to give up a day's wage ($100)  each year to support the artist, then an artist can earn $100,000 per year.

It's a simple formula for artist success and it is exactly the path that Calabash is currently developing to allow fans to microfund working musicians. Calabash is changing the way the world finances music by applying the principles of microfinancing to the music industry.

Our groundbreaking approach is the creation of the 'Tune Your World' Music Microfund -- an online music microfunding platform and social network that allows any musician to raise money for their next recording project directly from their fans -- thus pre-financing the startup costs. Learn more about our micro-funding platform...

We're operating our Microfund on a people-to-people model: musicians obtain funding for their recordings without giving up ownership or control. Fan/Sponsors are able to feel a personal connection with a music project and get regular updates from musicians. Instead of buying music via a distribution network that prevents most of your money from getting to the artist, peer-to-peer micro-financing lets you sponsor small amounts directly to a particular musician.

Every artist has the same problem of obtaining capital for their next recording. Our micro-credit platform will create fan-funded pre-financing of their startup costs. For example, Canadian artist Jill Sobule set up a page on her web site to raise $75,000 from her fans by creating several categories of sponsorship. $10 gets you a download copy of the album, while $10,000 let's you sing along during the recording session. Jill raised over $80,000 exceeding her goal!

With your help we can create an easy-to-use service that any of our artists can use to reach out to their own True Fans. You'll be providing opportunities to revitalize the music industry in places where the music industry has never really worked very well. You can participate in a new cottage industry of micro-financed recordings produced in music capitals across the globe.

To get this job done, Calabash needs our own True Fans. We've been running the gauntlet of trying to raise money from the Venture Capital world and are being told that while our concept is great, we should come back when we are grossing more than $5 million.

We don't need $5 million.

We're doing our own micro-credit campaign with you, our True Fans, to raise $100,000 -- which will pay our development costs to launch our musician micro-credit platform -- ultimately supporting all of the artists we work with around the world.

We've created a variety of suggested funding levels -- each with its own reward:

$10 - Entry Level: 10-song download compilation

$25 - Bronze Level: USB Flash Drive loaded with 10-song compilation

$50 - Silver Level: USB Flash Drive loaded with 20-song compilation

$100 - Gold Level: USB Flash Drive loaded with 40-song compilation

Use Calabash's True Fans widget below to help us reach our goal! Contributions to Calabash will be paid via your Payapl account.

Learn more...

www.tuneyourworld.com