Voice of A Generation - Steve Albini
What started as a Twitter spat became one of our favorite conversations.
There’s a concept in branding called Voice & Tone, where the voice of a brand is equivalent to its personality, and the tone is how that personality expresses itself in any given situation. Steve Albini’s tone has mellowed since his days as a firebrand record producer and media personality in the 80s and 90s. But his voice as a pragmatic DIY musician hasn’t budged.
He might take shots at bands he’s worked with like he did to the Pixies in 1991 (“Never have I seen four cows more anxious to be led around by their nose rings.”), Albini still shoots straight, mainly on Twitter. So it went recently when he challenged bands to speak up against merch fees that venues charge performers.
It seems reasonable, except that we waded into the discourse by pointing out that merch fees were just one of several points of potential negotiations between artists and venues. Steve’s online response was to call it twaddle, a fantastic thing to be called by one of your heroes. But that didn’t prevent him from agreeing to sit down for an hour-long convo with The Cadence about merch fees, among other things.
It turns out that in the more nuanced forum of a Zoom call, what Albini was trying to get at is that venues often hide these fees in contracts that the bands are not intimately familiar with — accusing promoters and agents of tacitly colluding to maximize their revenues (an agent’s percentage isn’t affected by merch tax) by taking money directly from band/fan merch sales.
And that’s just the start of our convo that covers archive recordings (“Digital formats are doomed, but analog masters themselves are extraordinarily robust.”), Atmos mixing (“There is a lot of top-down pressure from the record labels, content distributors and streaming sites.”), and the problem with collective action in music (“It would require all of the labels and all of the lawyers and everyone involved to say, we will support you, people who we have been exploiting our entire career.”)
As pundits ourselves, we didn’t let all of Steve’s takes go unchecked. But as a conversation, it was polite, enlightening and exactly what we love at The Cadence.
You can watch the first 10 minutes of the conversation, where we dig deep on the topic of merch fees, for free.
And get the full hour-long chat, plus our complete archives of Cadence Talks, by becoming a paid supporter.
TAKEAWAYS
Salient statements from this week’s music news.
1. Apple Music Pays Labels and Creators as Much as 90% More Than Spotify
Apple pays much more in all royalties per million streams and manages to make more money itself.
Takeaway: The gaps in payments between the services are primarily caused by the lower income earned from the 348 million who use Spotify’s free ad-supported tier. All Apple Music subscribers pay for the service.
2. Morgan Stanley is Investing More Than $700M to Buy Music Copyrights with Kobalt
The collapse of Hipgnosis isn’t preventing investment banks from placing bets on rights management teams with a winning record.
Takeaway: The Morgan Stanley deal represents a return to managing investment for outside capital for Kobalt. Kobalt’s previous investment management arm, Kobalt Capital, facilitated the sale of two music-owning funds in the past few years for a total of around $1.4 billion.
3. Bandcamp Union Files Unfair Labor Practice Charge Against Songtradr
The complaint alleges that layoffs that took place as part of the sale from Epic were motivated by workers’ support of the union.
Takeaway: The fact that Bandcamp United filed the charge does not mean the NLRB will take action against Songtradr, but it could after an investigation of the claims.
