Last night was Molly’s fourth Tuesday evening playing M’Coul’s Pub in downtown Greensboro, solo, and it was by far the most fun for me to experience.
Not only did the attendance jump tremendously over the last three performances — thanks specifically to Ingrid, Todd (he performed on-stage for the first time in 9 years!) Dara, Amani, Kathy, Ashley and Andy for making it out — but Molly beautifully transitioned from one song to the next, weaving stories behind the music effortlessly into the lyrics of the next song.
And then she improvised.
She fired up GarageBand on her MacBook, which was loaded with a handful of songs she’s been sketching over the last few weeks, and dropped Fantastic Day (the above video). It’s my favorite of her new material, as it’s founded with a hip baseline, lyrics modern to this moment in time and a ton of potential. There’s still work to be done on it, but it was so much fun to experience an artist perform and not be afraid of trying completely new material that’s only partially together.
Oh yeah, another buzz from tonight; I was able to set up the PA system in no time flat (there actually was a mixing board, vocal speaker and monitor in play). That’s big progress for a guy who still can’t setup his home stereo system.
If you live in the Triad and you don’t want your local bar, restaurant or club venue to morph into a Donutland and shut down overnight, do yourself a favor and read this announcement I received from the venerable Kathy Clark:
Some of you may have heard that the City of Winston-Salem is trying to pass a “Night Club Ordinance” that would severely impact a lot of venues financially, ultimately forcing them to close down. The story is long and involved, but basically in response to the shooting of a police officer at a night club, the City proposes to make all night club owners hire off duty police officers as security guards at a rate of $25 an hour. The number of officers would be based on the capacity of the club. For a club the size of The Garage, four officers would need to be hired.
There is more to the ordinance than just this. City officials would ultimately have the final say on who can perform in Winston and where they are allowed to perform. All this is designed to reduce violence in Winston-Salem.
The ordinance does not address such issues as the fact that Winston-Salem has a higher percentage of rape than the national average. Shootings occur in apartment complexes, at shopping centers, not just night clubs. And domestic violence is a much larger problem than night club violence.
Very soon, we could have a totally different nightlife - one devoid of new and interesting music.
Your support matters. Please help. And please forward this to anyone that may care: a music lover looking for great live music, a musician looking for venues in which to play, people interested in downtown revitalization. This will impact us all.
I’ve been to The Garage. It’s not very big. I can’t imagine how they’d be able to pay acts to perform with $100 flying out the window each hour. Do the cops also perform doorman duties at that rate? How about bar back?
It’s a ridiculous broad stroke proposal to thwart the potential repeat of a terrible, yet isolated incident.
You don’t even need to live in Winston-Salem to help. Here’s what you can do:
[...] Credibility is key to longevity in the twenty first century. If you’re a real musician, don’t throw on a tux or a fancy gown, go down to the juke joint and PLAY! Get the booze flowing, improvise a bit, try to connect with the patrons. Don’t worry so much about selling as DELIVERING! [...]
Molly’s playing M’Coul’s Pub tonight, just like she does every Tuesday night. See you there at 9pm sharp.
That status line from Stephen made me smile. Big time.
You’ll probably digest it differently from the next person — those familiar with the current state of the dotmatrix project have the best context — but I’m taking a positive drop such as that as a sign that I’m progressing in my attempts to become a community-centered entrepreneur.
My last project, The People, Yes, fell on its face — and is currently on life support in a coma — after more than a years worth of effortfromanumberofsupertalentedpeople. While working with the homeless community isn’t an easy venture to begin with, we ultimately closed up shop due to my stubbornness — locking onto my initial vision with titanium clamps rather than to allow talented people do what they do best.
I won’t make the same mistake twice.
I’m sure I’ll continue to toss ideas into the mix that complicate everyones plans, but I’ll do so with an explicit understanding and respect towards the agreed upon and established roles of the dotmatrix project team.
Above is Stephen Charles, our Lead Coordinator, Photography Community. If you’re not familiar with his work, you should be.
I’ll introduce the entire team in a couple of days.
I’ll update this post later with more details, but from a cursory glance of the Terms of Agreement, a 10% “Share” payout is based on the number of full-length plays by an artist divided by the overall number of full-length catalog plays.
There will also be a subscription service with unlimited, on demand radio play. Don’t know if downloads are included.
UPDATE: More on how the free radio model works, from Eliot Van Buskirk at Wired’s Listening Post:
[...] Every time you listen to a song on the service, Last.fm tracks it, despite the lack of a login requirement. If you delete your cookies, the site apparently won’t be able to track you. I confirmed that by deleting the Last.fm cookies file within FireFox, one can listen to a song for a fourth time without even restarting the browser. When asked about the possibility of people using this trick to gain unlimited listens, Miller said he would prefer not to talk about it, but thatonly technically sophisticated users with an agenda would bother. (One unwelcome side-effect of the cookies being deleted could be that Last.fm loses the demographic information so valuable to the site’s advertisers.) [...]
Anyone who listens to Last.fm is technically sophisticated… and we all have an agenda of not spending money. From the position of an indie artist manager, I don’t think gaming the cookies would affect the royalty payment scheme, so I really don’t care. Along those lines, here are some of the royalty program details (pulled directly from the T&A when signing up):
7.4 Last.fm shall pay the following royalties in respect of the transmission of Your Content as permitted by You:
for the free radio service, 10% of the Share of Last.fm’s Net Revenue from the free radio service.
for the personalised premium radio service, the greater of 10% of the Share of Last.fm’s Net Revenue from the personalised radio service or US $0.0005 (Ed: 1/200th of a penny for non-math majors) for each complete transmission on the personalised radio service of a track which forms part of Your Content transmitted on the Last.fm service.
for the free on-demand service, 30% of the Share of Last.fm’s Net Revenue from the free on-demand service.
for the premium on-demand service, the greater of 30% of the Share of Last.fm’s Net Revenue from the premium on-demand service or US $0.005 for each complete transmission on the prepaid or subscription on-demand service of a track which forms part of Your Content transmitted on the Last.fm service.
The first two payout options are based purely on revenue generated by free plays, while the last two are based on revenue generated by the on-demand (free and premium). As an indie manager, I’m going to need to dive deeper to wrap my head around the free & premium on-demand services.
In any case, this is found money as far as the indie artist is concerned — well, at least it is until an act’s popularity starts to actually chart. But even at that point, Last.fm replaces radio of old — in a much more dynamic fashion — and what artist gets paid for radio plays?
As a music fan, I’m totally cool with three free plays; that’s all the sampling I need to know if I want to support the artist with a purchase or a Lala.com trade.
This looks promising for all involved — labels, acts and fans.
A big shout of thanks goes to my uber talented brother, Andy Coon. His skills on The Final Cut Pro is only matched by my ability to futz around on The Internets.
That’s how I stumbled across this gem of a description for the “New Artist” page (my emphasis):
With the millions of singer-songwriters, garage bands, rookie rappers, parlor poppers and wannabe stars vying for a spot on your musical radar, how are you supposed to stay in the know? How can you figure out which new artists are actually worth listening to and who’s just aural waste?
Let MTV do it for you! We keep tabs on the best and brightest of all of the new artists, groups and bands out there — from underground rappers and emcees to Brit pop groups, to basement indie rock bands and emerging acts just breaking onto the scene — so you can stay in the know. That means MTV is the place to find out about new artists as they’re emerging from their shells and taking their shot at the big time.
MTV filters out the noise, gives you the good stuff and hooks you up with everything you need to get started on your way to becoming a die-hard fan of the best new artists on the scene. You get videos, song and album previews, video interviews, exclusive live performances, backstage footage, concert info and more. Plus, you get exclusive MTV content like Playlibs, where we sit down with new artists and ask them about their favorite songs, guiltiest pleasures and the music that inspired them, and show you all the videos too. And A.D.D. Bio, an online show where you get the super-speedy story behind brand-new artists.
When the world is just starting to buzz about artists like Amy Winehouse, Mika, Klaxons, Cold War Kids, Madina Lake, MIMS, Mastodon, Gym Class Heroes and Lily Allen, MTV already had the goods on all of ‘em for you, online at MTV.com. So when you’re getting sick of everything on your MP3 player and looking to discover new music, MTV.com gives you all you need to know about the new artists you need to know about.
I don’t know what you heard when you read that verbiage, but I heard MTV telling me that I don’t know shit about music; then explaining basic English to me as if I’m a fucking moron; then reassuring me that if I suck the teet of MTV.com, I’ll know everything I need to know about music.
Want to see what a new artist page looks like in the world that’s going to murder site/channels like MTV in the very near future?
Amie Street doesn’t perform a bullshit role of “gatekeeper of quality music”; they present new artists from an objective position of “here are the newest artists who have joined our community.”
The only reason to do otherwise is to keep exposure channels walled off in order to drive up the cost of doing promotional business; THAT MEANS MTV is looking backwards, not forwards.
MTV will spin a “new artists” section as if they’re music experts helping you find an artist that speaks to you, but they’re no Rolling Stone circa 1982.
Think I want music recommendations from the people that give me this on-air garbage?
I’m a single, 37 year-old man with a bunch of disposable income who loves music. I’d watch MTV for hours on end if they would give me videos for once underground, forever great music like this:
But serving the desires of a music fan isn’t central to their business model anymore. They should get a fucking moon man award from Madison Avenue.
The days when MTV meant anything to the world of music are long gone.
