Nashville Pop: Canny Rehash? Spawn of Satan?

We can’t look away.  Like a hillside full of picnickers at a Civil War bloodbath, or a beer-swilling teen watching a train hit a semi, we can’t believe the skill with which Nashville is appropriating rock ‘n’ roll.  Brad Paisley?  Toby Keith?  Tim McGraw?  These titans of candy-apple trash have recycled every thought, every sentiment, every classic lick while plowing through rock history like Sherman on the road to Atlanta.  And Kid Rock?  After the killers do their work, the vultures pick the bones clean.

Montgomery Gentry, a rootsy, harmony-driven duo with some tasty guitar playing, currently has a smash single called  “Roll with Me.”  This murderous pastiche somehow evokes the Allman Brothers, The Guess Who, Molly Hatchet, and — via “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” — Bob Dylan.  At first it sounds winning.  But ultimately it nauseates — anthemic rock by numbers, spiritual truth for lovers of easy answers.

As Gertrude Stein put it, there is no “there” there.

It isn’t country music.  It’s the appropriation of rock by songwriters and producers who are cleverer by half than modern-rock artists.  And they’re taking the lunch money.  Pull up a seat, try the Texas pulled pork.

MySpace Music Goes to the Mat for the Major Labels

More details are emerging on MySpace Music.  They aren’t pretty.

Despite MySpace’s indie bona fides – dude, can we sleep on your floor? – the new MySpace Music is not independent.  It is, rather, a play to limit access to distribution.  Unlike the egalitarian iTunes, MySpace Music excludes independents from the table while granting the major labels an equity stake.

That’s right, ownership.  Although Amit Kapur, COO of MySpace, wouldn’t confirm it yesterday, independent distributor The Orchard let it slip in a blast email this morning.

Sound familiar?  Shut out challengers, marginalize competition, control the flow of music to the consumer. 

A strength of the Internet is, of course, its unfettered access to things large and small.  Apple knows it, Amazon knows it.  Yet the major labels still see independents as barbarians at their gate.  What they don’t seem to understand is that the gate has been open for ten years now, and it’s not in their power to close it.

Whether or not the major labels MySpace Music will operate (and compensate) transparently remains to be seen.  However, by excluding independents from active participation – and controlling their access to the channel — we can only ask:

Haven’t we seen this movie before?

Yep.  And it was crummy the first time.

MySpace Music: Beware?

MySpace Music launched this morning.  It offers some intriguing features, such as allowing artists and labels to upload their entire catalogs for streaming.  And to get paid for it.  Great, right?  Maybe.

As is sometimes the case when the major labels get involved, the MySpace Music model for remuneration lacks detail.  In a nutshell, it is a subscription model paid for by site advertising rather than user fees.  In this arrangement, artists and labels make their tracks available for free streaming.  MySpace Music in turn sells ads on every blank spot they can cover.  Then MySpace Music identifies a percentage of their ad revenue, divvies it up among the participating artists and labels, and pays each of them per an as-yet unspecified metric.

In other words, the retailer — or, in this case, the monolith giving the music away — pays not what they agree to pay, but what they choose to pay.  And what compensation, specifically, will an artist or independent label receive per streaming play?  That part is missing from the media campaign.

In fairness to MySpace Music, this once-relevant grassroots juggernaut now servicing the major labels, maybe they will pay the artists and independent labels, who have no leverage in this arrangement, fairly and generously. 

Then again, nothing is forcing them to.

Note to MySpace Music: artists expect transparency from you.  Announce a range of what you plan to pay per streaming play.  Otherwise, rumor has it that iTunes is readying its own streaming service.  And we already trust them.