Music Hype

It seems that Chase & Status will be performing in the United Kingdom in the near future. They are scheduled to take place in various select locations during the month of May and April. The tour is scheduled that way to create buzz for their anticipated second album, which is scheduled to be released at the end of May. A new single called More Than A Lot is scheduled to be the first released to the general public, but that might change.

Hadouken has also announced it will tour in the United Kingdom, but in more venues than Chase & Status – but still not a big tour. The tour will play in select locations, and will be called Koko. The group, which is known for its dance and rock influences, will give away a prize to people who bought tickets, so buying more tickets gives you a bigger chance to win. Prizes include VIP tickets, meetings with the band, etc.
The tour will go on during February and March.

Pere Ubu has also announced he is going on tour, but a much shorter one around select locations in the United Kingdom, including London, during the month of February. The tour is intended to promote a release of a new album he created, called “Long Live Pere Ubu!”. Pere Ubu has said that he plans to use electronic ambience, choreography and animations during his live shows, which will make it a spectacle. But the spectacle will only be present in some of the shows – so buy your tickets accordingly.

Another person who announced he is touring is Peter Andre, who will tour during December – also throughout the United Kingdom. There will only be eleven events, but since he rarely performs live, it is expected to be a big draw. Peter will be performing with his band.

Artists who aren’t satisfied with the current situation, which doesn’t allow enough artists exposure – either justifiably or unjustifiably, have set forth to make a digital way of eliminating the “man in the middle” – the record companies. Instead of creating a digital version of the record companies – versions who will fix the problems with the now bloated and cumbersome record companies, they opted to throw away that true and tested method – either because they don’t agree with it, or they just got so sick of it they didn’t think rationally.

But now new problems arise, which the old bloated record companies fixed – in their own way, and old problems show their ugly head – digital distribution becomes bloated and filled with bureaucracy due to the situation, which is the flooding of artists to the new method, trying to strike gold.

The new problems are that now artists are hard to find amongst the noise, and no connection is made between the listener (the fan) and the artist.
So now the artists all decide to offer bonuses, hoping it will help spread their music around the world – they offer free tracks or free albums.
But now since everyone tried to do the same thing, bands are in the same rut they started in. And now the noise is even louder, and artists who don’t want to conform to the new method of getting exposure – by giving entire albums away, get even less exposure than before, which adds to the problem.

Plus since listeners are now able to download hundreds and hundreds of free albums, and even more individual tracks, they opt to download them, instead of paying for their music. With hundreds of albums to listen to, why would anyone want to waste money on even more music? There’s a few years’ worth of music there.

And now digital distribution websites need to turn into a mini version of the record companies, or they’ll bleed money, due to low album costs and high internet traffic.

It seems like a lot of artists got dissatisfied with their situation – such as artists signed on by the record company and “groomed” by them, who didn’t appreciate the amount of money they made from selling each album. They see big bands like Aerosmith and many others, and they see how much money they have in the bank, and they want more. Plus they see that they’re selling what seems to be a decent amount of copies of each album.

Another type of dissatisfied artists are artists who are out of the loop, who sometimes sound like the records companies’ other signed artists, and who want to get the exposure that the signed artists get, and the money they get. They turn to the record companies and get rejected, for a reason they don’t understand or think is bogus. Also they listen to the signed artists and they think the music the record companies produce isn’t unique and isn’t very good, so they think that they have a product that surpasses the record companies’ other signed artists, and they don’t understand why they didn’t get in.

That and several other reasons caused artists to seek the elimination of the record companies – either from the development stages of a band, or entirely. But since record companies are legitimate businesses who make more than they spend, they won’t go away entirely, so digital distribution is brought to the table. It is a way to eliminate the record companies from the development stages undertaken by new artists – who hear horror stories about the record companies, and don’t want to go through the same things themselves. But now, due to justifiable causes, the artist stands alone amidst many other artists of various other genres, trying to be heard amongst the crowd – something that is very hard to do.

Record companies are another way in which a music listener can find music that suits his tastes. Even though some record companies are bloated and spread over a lot of genres, when looking for music, a person can jump straight to searching in a record companies’ latest releases list, and get his fix.
It works the other way as well. When an artist wants to find his audience, he approaches a certain record company, to which music listeners of a certain kind pay attention to.
It might have been circumstantial, accidental, deliberate or a combination of some or all, but record companies have been associated with a certain sound.

It might have been due to establishing a certain audience – just because they published a record that a certain portion of the music listening audience liked, which made them pay attention to the other artists signed in with that record company. That means that any musician they signed that strayed from the formula was ignored and forgotten by the audience that bought his music, so the image the record company had wasn’t tarnished – because not enough people bought it, and the people who did didn’t recommend it to others.

Also the record companies might have established its current image due to a previous image it had – which might have changed a bit several times over the first years of their existence, which caused struggling artists to come to them asking for a job. The early years and the abuse of artists is wide known, but back then artists would give their soul to even have an audience. Friends of friends recommended artists to record companies, by selling them as people who cater to their audience, or who have a certain sound that is similar to the sound of other records released by the company.

Blues has a long tradition of artists – some well known, some not, who formed the genre and what later became known as “Rock”. Rock as well as Rock & Roll are known for their rebellious songs, which often deal with subjects other music genres don’t. They are considered to be showing “kicking and screaming” rebelliousness by using quick tempi, quick guitar playing, and the band’s antics on stage.
Blues itself isn’t very blue, but it was born out of sadness and hardships – so what IS blues, exactly?

Is Blues a feeling you have when writing the songs and playing them, or the contents of the songs?
Blues has a long line of artists known for the sadness of their songs, in which they cry out the lyrics rather than sing. There’s no other way to describe it. But even though Blues is still alive and kicking, but at a smaller scale, can it still be called “The Blues”?
Can Garbage be considered a bluesy band? They have very sad songs that deal with a troubled life, but they present the songs in a more of a rock & roll vibe. That brings us to the question of “what is blues?”.

What is it? Is it a way of crying out to the public about the bad times, like so many blues artists did, or is it a way to get over those hardships and deal with them? Are the artists that talk about being a hit with the women more bluesy than the ones crying about loves they lost? Or is it all part of the same thing?
It’s the age old question, and it doesn’t seem like it’s going to be answered any time soon, but one thing is clear – if it moves you, it’s already half way there.

Ever turned on the radio and thought to yourself “the same old garbage, why bother?”
Well, the obvious and overused answer to that is that it sells.
But there’s an explanation behind that short & overused answer.

The first thing to do is to look at the process of making an artist a household name. It begins with sending workers to concerts – small and big ones, and paying workers to go through thousands of cassettes and CDs trying to find something worthwhile. Nowadays they also pay workers to search for artists on Youtube, and on digital distribution websites.

After finding an artist, you need to train him. It might seem that way, but artists aren’t born into the mainstream. Record companies need to teach them how. They bring their knowledge and expertise, and use voice coaches, professional players and more, in order to expand the artist’s horizons.

After the training period comes the part where a product is made – it might take a year or more, but it’s a needed phase. In this phase an artist is accompanied by professionals who look for holes in the product he makes – either pure errors when he’s playing or singing, or errors of direction.
A lot of people don’t like when record companies fix artists who don’t cater to a specific crowd, but whether you like it or not, the record company spends years with an artist before he is polished enough, so, at least during the first album, the artist needs to recuperate some of the money lost.

During the first album barely any chances are taken. When it is discovered that the artist has succeeded beyond the company’s expectations, then can they take bigger risks and allow for greater variety, and allow creators to have a bigger artistic control. But that is purely due to the company’s marketing campaigns and work done with the artist. Fans don’t just appear out of nowhere.