Labour: I pity the Foos

The Labour Party - increasingly the Freddie And The Dreamers of British politics - is having a torrid time of it at the moment, as it struggles to try and find a leader who can get through the day without making Theresa May giggle with joy.

In the midst of the current leadership election, the party is beset by the political version of Do You Remember Bagpuss - purges, entryism, jokes about Derek Hatton's suits. I'm half expecting to switch on the Ten O'Clock News to catch a package where Jamie Theakston, Kate Thornton and Stuart Maconie try to remember the lyrics to The Red Flag.

Ah, but purges are awkward things, and apparently a Labour Party member has been suspended for the oddest of reasons. At least according to the Daily Mail:

Labour has suspended a new member from the party and denied a vote in the leadership election after she posted about her love of rock band Foo Fighters on Facebook.

Catherine Starr, a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn, was shocked to receive a letter from the party's General Secretary Iain McNicol telling her that following a vetting procedure she was being refused full membership as she had 'shared inappropriate content on Facebook'.

It said this related to a post on March 5 when she had shared a clip of Dave Grohl's band and wrote 'I f****** love the Foo Fighters'.

We should approach this all with a level of caution - we're living in a weird period of politics where you can't even trust an old man sitting in a vestibule, and this is the Daily Mail whose last honest piece of reporting on the Labour Party was "Kinnock resigns".

To be honest, it's not clear that Starr was suspended over a Foo Fighters post - the Mail does concede she'd been sharing other prime content that day:

That day Mrs Starr, 33, had also shared a friend's inoffensive poster about animal free cosmetics and a cartoon about veganism.

You know how much the Mail loves animal rights, right?

It is possible that the NEC has some ongoing beef with the Foo Fighters. Or maybe they see "Foo Fighters" as some sort of code for those who have recently joined the Labour Party for nefarious purposes.

It's much more likely that a party which has raised the bar on disarray to a level which would be offputting to Ekateríni Stefanídi have made an honest mis... okay, a dishonest mistake. They probably got the day of the offending post wrong, or the name of the offending poster wrong, or maybe confused the Foo Fighters and Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds.

The party hasn't responded to the story yet, but almost certainly will deny it, admit it but say the details are wrong, look crossly over its spectacles at us, and pretend to never have heard of the Foo Fighters. All at the same time.

Is there any way Ticketmaster could become any more Monopolyesque?

Yes, yes there is.

As if the Ticketmaster behemoth hadn't rolled over enough of the music industry, they're teaming up with similar monolithic control block Facebook:

“At Ticketmaster, we’re continuing to build our platforms to make it easier to get tickets into the hands of fans. Ticketmaster integrates with key partners that make the buying experience simpler for fans and are complimentary to our artist and venue clients,” said the Live Nation-owned company.

“We recognise that Facebook delivers on scale and discovery. At Ticketmaster, we have the security and convenience of mobile verified ticket transaction technology. Together we are able to provide a seamless experience allowing the fan to purchase at the point of event discovery.

“Fans can discover an event and purchase a ticket within one experience.”

In future iterations, Facebook will just bill you and deliver the tickets without waiting for any interaction because IT KNOWS BETTER THAN YOU WHAT YOU WILL LIKE.

By 2019, Facebook/Ticketmaster will have the process down to a point where it will remove money from your bank account in return for automatically posting a message about how much you would have enjoyed the concert, without the need for you to be involved. A ten per cent fee will be levied on top for this service.

Tom Araya tells Fucking Slayer Gang to fuck off

You know what? When you're bullying the wife of the leader of the band you claim to be supporting, you might have lost your way a little:

"Hi. This is Tom Araya, and I'd like to talk to you about something that has recently spiraled out of control.

"I hate to blame an entire group for the actions of a few.

"There is a group on Facebook that associate themselves with my band, SLAYER, Claiming to be fans, they made up a sign that they use to represent themselves as SLAYER fans. They call themselves Fucking Slayer Gang, [or] FSG. They came into existence about eight months ago and had approached my wife, Sandra, under the guise of a family asking for support and if she would ask me if I would also show support by throwing the SLAYER hand sign that they had come up with.

"After a few months had passed, my wife did not like how this group was managing their Facebook page and decided it was best to leave their group and all other groups she was part of. The conduct that this group was showing, and has shown, is distasteful, rude and disrespectful to all SLAYER and metal fans.

"Now, I [flashed] this sign [for a photo] in support for my wife, who later told me that it was not a good idea to associate with this group or sign, that they were cyberbullies and that they would attack anyone who questioned their motives, and have even gone as far as attacking my wife publicly on SLAYER fan pages and metal fan pages.

"It has come to our attention that they have taken liberties with the photo of myself and my wife [throwing] the so-called 'SLAYER sign' by posting these pictures and claiming our support. Well, I'm here to say that it's not true. We do not support this gang or such behavior.

"The metal community is a growing community of loyal fans, not only to the bands that they support, but to each other.

"Thank you."

This is Tom from Slayer saying that you're overstepping a line. It's a bit like the Krays suggesting you tone down the violence,

Downloadable: Stacey

So around about Christmas last year, Stacey released her first ep. It sounded like this:

Which is great.

There's more, though, as she's had the builders in and reworked the entire thing. And it sounds great - if anything, they could have pushed the settings for her voice even further, as it travels incredibly well.

You can have it just for liking the idea of it on Facebook.

Maximum Rock & Roll dig out old Black Flag review; set off firecrackers

Thirty years ago, MRR reviewed Black Flag's My War. Tim Yo wasn't impressed:

To me, it sounds like BLACK FLAG doing an imitation of IRON MAIDEN imitating BLACK FLAG on a bad day. The shorter songs are rarely exciting, and the three on the B-side are sheer torture. I know depression and pain are hallmarks of BLACK FLAG's delivery, but boredom too? (TY)

Of course, thirty years ago, there wasn't an internet for staunch-defenders-of-that-particular-Black-Flag-line-up to 'have their "say"' on. Their whiny responses were just shouted at paper, and who would know they fundamentally disagreed with those views from that?

The magazine has fixed that problem by putting the review online, thereby giving people the chance to argue against a three decade old review:

Greg Ayotte Side 2 always. You're a very close minded punk, it's about freedom of expression for a punk band, not playing at the speed of light. It has been such a huge influence, side 2 the main focus. Hell, it created grunge, which has influenced all rock music since. Everything after slip it in is pretty much crap but to compare my war to any iron maiden is just ignorance...

Chadd Heath Yeah, that's one shitty and completely wrong review and i hope that person was "fired" or whatever they do at MRR.

Is the review really more wrong than hoping the magazine sacked its own publisher and founder for writing it? Hard to calibrate that one.

Coming up next week: MMR unseals the long-stilled Rapeman debate, pretends to be surprised when it kicks off.

The very best of Liam Gallagher

6Music asked their listeners what they'd put on "the Ultimate Liam Gallagher playlist". Probably not a question you should ask an audience who actually care about music.

Warners man takes chunk of Deezer

Len Blavatnik, who bought Warners a while back, has invested about 80 million quid in Deezer, the music streaming site.

Is Blavatnik a shrewd investor? Besides the way he lobbed cash into Warners, which doesn't really suggest a man able to set aside sentiment from a long-term outlook.

Well, he put cash into Top-Up TV.

Yes you do, Top-Up TV. They had that advert with the gnomes in it a few years back. They base their business on the idea that when people buy a Freeview box to avoid having to subscribe to TV services, what they really mean is they desperately want to be able to subscribe to TV services. That Top-Up TV.

Deezer, this far, has been ticking along - mostly trying for growth outside the US where it's too difficult and/or expensive to do much. Presumably the new money will be an attempt to break that market.

There's something almost a little sweet about Deezer's Wikiepdia entry, particularly this line:

Some artists are not available on Deezer due to licensing restrictions by the record labels: Francis Cabrel and The Beatles are examples.

Nothing says 'not really trying in North America' like the lack of Francis Cabrel tracs being a major point of note, does it?

Deezer's fundamental flaw is that it requires you to be logged in to Facebook to use it. It's bad enough that Facebook insists you be logged in to use it, but at least you can see why Facebook might tie themselves so closely to their single log-in. What future would Deezer have when Facebook hits its Decline of Empire point?

Billy Corgan blames the internet for killing rock

Billy Corgan thinks that Facebook is stifling innovation in rock music:

"You've got a Facebook with a few hundred friends. If you do something truly radical, are you ready to withstand the forty negative comments?," Corgan asks. "Most people aren't. So they're getting peer pressured at levels they don't even realize," he adds.

Corgan, of course, is known for his radicalism, taking the wild and crazy step of reviving the Smashing Pumpkins not to pacify the gods of iTunes or Facebook, but simply because it was a valuable brand name that could be used to shake dollars out of ageing fans desperate to chase their fading youth but who were, frankly, uninterested in either Zwan or his solo stuff ("for wild experimental reasons").

You've got to wonder how people would get 100 Facebook fans if 40% of them didn't really like what you were doing.

The bigger question, though, is if Corgan actually understands what experimentation and risk-taking actually are. If you do something really different, difficult and challenging and don't expect half of your fans to dislike it, you're probably not really taking that big a leap.

The suspicion has to be that Corgan doesn't really like the internet because it's not an environment that rewards very rich men pulling 'serious thinking face' with quiet nodding and the odd tear of respect. Corgan dates from an era when rock stars were at the top end of a one-way street of adoration. It's no wonder he doesn't feel comfortable in a world where the audience talks back.

The irony is that if the web had been a more common medium twenty years ago, Corgan might have been saved from disappearing into his own fundament.

The Lives of the Saint Etienne

To build their Facebook timeline into a full-on history, Saint Etienne are inviting fans to email them with photos, memorabilia, memories, cuttings and stuff like that:

Would you like to contribute your memories of seeing, listening or reading about the group to the Timeline, and share your experiences with other fans? These could be photos of Saint Etienne shows, ticket stubs, early vinyl, magazine cuttings, or memorabilia - absolutely anything to do with the group. The more unique, the more other fans will appreciate it.

We'll pick our favourites and put them into the Timeline, giving you full accreditation and telling the story on your behalf. If you submit something that really makes us smile, there are a few prizes that Sarah, Pete and Bob have been keeping in their lock-up.

Please email all content (photos, clippings, videos, stories) you'd like submitted to the timeline to saint.etienne@umusic.com

If the prizes are really good, you could then submit those again to the timeline, and might win more prizes, in an ever-growing circle until you get to keep Bob Stanley in your spare bedroom. [NB: This might not form part of the actual terms and conditions.]

MIDEM 2012: What does 'sharing' actually mean

Facebook trumpet round the MIDEM conference with a huge number:

The 2012 Midem Music Conference has brought new data to light about the Facebook Music experience which launched last Fall: over 5 billion songs have been shared via Facebook as a total count since they launched the Facebook Music thing last year at the f8 conference.

Five Billion is certainly a number with a lot of zeroes. But what does this "sharing" actually constitute?

Sharing used to mean making a song available - borrowing (or, if you were an executive stealing) an actual track.

This five billion might include some people clicking on links to hear a song, but mostly just means billions of little blips of data floating up the side of the screen, mostly ignored.

Spacelab is starry-eyed:

What's more, the Facebook music sharing data shows a wholly different group of songs than what you'll find on the Top 40.

Really? Wholly different?

"When we looked at the top 100 songs shared on Facebook, it was a lot of the same songs you would discover if you looked on a Billboard chart. Some artists aren't as famous globally but have local artists with pockets of fans. One example is Skrillex. [He's] not necessarily a top 10 artist, but two of [his] songs [were on our chart.] So that's one of the really powerful things about this. It's not just reinforcing the same songs everybody's listening to, but enabling artists to be discovered in ways that were never possible before at scale," said Facebook's VP of partnerships Dan Rose to Billboard editorial director Bill Werde in a keynote Q&A Monday.

So that's "wholly different" in the sense of "mostly identical, except for a few cases.

(And don't you love the idea that Skrillex is some sort of out-there act who you wouldn't come across without Facebook?)

It's clear Facebook haven't really thought through their pitch - if it's not about reinforcing the same songs everyone listens to, then what's the point of a top 100 listing?

As with most things it touches, Facebook don't offer anything particularly valuable or inventive, and rely just on scale.

Still, five billion has a lot of noughts in it.

Gordon in the morning: It's complicated

Really, Gordon? 2012, and you still think there's mileage in giggling about Facebook's use of 'poke'?

Your chance to poke Wayne Rooney’s face

Elsewhere in The Sun, a large swathe of the paper is handed over to Simon Cowell to try and relaunch his leaky World Of New Faces.

It has all the grace and attraction of those panicked Tesco full-page adverts that popped up in the press this week - and has the same sense of an organisation that never expected to fail flapping about trying to cope with suddenly slamming into reverse.

Speaking to The Sun prior to today's start of BGT auditions in Manchester, Cowell also confessed he had poached Alesha Dixon to join BGT from Strictly Come Dancing to wound the hit BBC1 show.

Given that Strictly doesn't go head-to-head with X Factor, never mind Britain's Got Talent, it's hard to see why Cowell needs to bother about wounding Strictly.

In effect, he's saying he took Dixon on not because he thought he she'd be great at telling people doing dog-and-pony-ventriloquism how great they were, but simply because he thought it'd make a different programme less watchable. It's like those slimy blokes who break up relationships not because they're in love with someone else, but just for the joy of ruining lives.

Dixon must be thrilled to discover that what attracted Cowell to her judging was, erm, the thought of an empty seat next to Len Goodman.

The trouble is, it suggests that Cowell is even further out of things than 2011 showed. Nobody comes away from Strictly talking about Alesha's judging; she's pretty much always been panel-paddage. Perhaps Cowell should concentrate more on trying to raise the standards of his clapped-out shows rather than trying to spoil something everyone else quite enjoys.

Pandora sued for frictionless sharing

You know how, if you use Facebook and Spotify and aren't too careful, how all of a sudden everything you listen to gets pumped out to the wider world? Pandora introduced a similar feature a few months back.

There's now a class action lawsuit being gathered in Michigan, which claims the sudden wittering out of 'now playing' information to the usually-more-public-than-you're-expecting Facebook is a breach of a promise the service made to keep everyone's tastes private. If successful, it could cost Pandora $5,000 a user.

Not quite frictionless, then.

Tomorrow, everything changes...

Or, more likely, won't much, but there's just one more sleep before Facebook launch their music service.

At a guess, it'll be a bit tricky to use, and will rely on the sheer traction of a massive user base to build popularity for a less-than-perfect service. Like everything else on Facebook, in other words.

Rolling Stone: dead or stumbling?

Robin Davey at Kerascene is currently reading the last rites for Rolling Stone, based on how few 'likes' their current cover stars picked up:

What can a feature on the front of the most regarded and iconic musical magazine get you?

Over the two-week period that this particular issue covered, the band mustered up about 2000 Facebook likes. When I first looked it stood at a little over 10,000, now it stands and just under 12,000.

Is that really the weight that Rolling Stone has in the current market?

If so, it would appear that opinionated music journalism is certainly stumbling if not already dead.

Perhaps. But let's just hold off pushing the title into a hole and examine this a bit.

Rolling Stone still claims to sell just shy of 1.4 million copies an issue, so it's got a bit of a pulse. But that's not really Davey's point; he's suggesting that while people might still buy the magazine, it's not got any influence.

But hold on a moment - which band was featured on this cover?

The Sheepdogs.

Yes, exactly. The Sheepdogs. Who weren't on the cover of the magazine because the editors thought they were any good, but because they'd won some sort of contest to be there.

Here they are, look:

To be frank, given that they're on the cover of the magazine after winning some sort of raffle, and given how, if you'll let me judge a book by its magazine cover, they appear to be what you'd get if a Coldplay tribute band tried to turn themselves at short notice into a Doctor Hook tribute act, it's a miracle they picked up 2,000 likes.

Are we even sure that 'extra Facebook likes' is even a fair metric for judging the impact of a band appearing on a magazine cover? Isn't it quite a leap from going 'well, this band might be worth a listen' to liking on Facebook - there are bands that I have been passionate about, or dreamed of getting passionate with, for a generation who I haven't even visited on Facebook. Possibly, the cover has generated new fans who choose to mark their fandom in other ways; possibly, the cover has got some people mildly interested but whose interest has yet to turn into any form of commitment as permanent as a public click on a 'like' button.

Do we even know what proportion of Rolling Stone readers use Facebook in such a way as to interact with bands through the Like button? For all we know, 2,000 likes might represent all people who read Rolling Stone and use the Like button.

And, equally important: what Rolling Stone reader is interested in new music anyway? It's not 1972 any more; don't Rolling Stone's key audience approach new bands in the way Seinfeld approaches potential new friends - "thanks for your interest, but I'm not really in the market right now. I've got no vacancies." In measuring calls to action, wouldn't you be better off seeing how many people respond to a cover saying 'look, another Elvis Costello Best Of has been released'?

Rolling Stone might have lost its claims to cultural leadership. It might be stumbling into a long, whistling downwards plume. But all we've got here is evidence that if you put a rubbish-looking band on the front page, it doesn't generate much Facebook love for said band. It's interesting; I'm just not sure it matters at all.

Downloadable: Electrogothy goodness

Fancy a big, doomy, gothy compilation from the fine people at SideLine magazine? Just woosh over to SideLine's Facebook presence, like them, and you'll get the link.

(Am I alone in finding there something slightly creepy about this 'tell me you like me and I'll give you a present' set-up? It's a bit like a mother withholding supper until you tell mummy you love here.)

Facebook hopes music will stop the inevitable decline being inevitable

Mark Mulligan has done a guest blog for Hypebot:

How Zuckerberg Is Using Music To Keep Facebook From 'Doing a MySpace'

Hmm. MySpace used music in a bid to stop MySpace doing a Friendster, but Zuckerberg is being a bit smarter:

Zuckerberg’s music strategy is simple:

Make Facebook an integral part of the music experience without ever getting bogged down in paying to license the music from record labels.

And, more importantly, without having the panoply of hosting to bother about.

Still, if this does fail, he could always put the site in a sack and try to flog it to an old media company.

If you really love Britney, she might give you a track

It's not unusual for pop stars to ask fans to jump through hoops in return for a freebie. This, though, is something different: Show Britney you still love her, and, erm, she'll let you buy a record:

On Monday, January 10th Britney fans worldwide will be encouraged to share a message on Facebook 2 million times.

Once this is accomplished, her new single, “Hold It Against Me” is unlocked for radio & for immediate sale on i-Tunes.

Sony Music Canada is offering the opportunity to Canadian stations to have their listeners participate through a customized Facebook widget that listeners can then forward.

In a similar move, our local butchers will put sausages on sale if we applaud loud enough when he walks down the street.

[Thanks again to Michael M]

Madonna prepares to sweat

The idea of Madonna starting up the machine that's been churning out horrible music for the last few years is enough to cope with on a miserable Sunday. We all could have done without this mental image:

"Its official! I need to move. I need to sweat. I need to make new music! Music I can dance to."

The thought of Madonna having her typing minion fire up Facebook to announce that she's preparing to gush sweat from whatever pores have survived the flesh cauterizing processes she's been through fair puts me off my cheesecake.

Perhaps she's obliged to issue a warning, as it also functions as a statement of intent to start eating the monkey glands of younger, more interesting artists:

"I'm on the lookout for the maddest, sickest, most bad ass people to collaborate with. I'm just saying"

Did you catch that at the end? That's what young people say when they're "chatting" on their "text phones" or "Twitting" through their "Faceybooks".

Madonna's search for the sickest people to collaborate with has been successful; she's spending Sunday at the Royal Leamington Spa General on the acute ward. Miss Ivy Doodleson, 86, tells reporters "we're just going to jam and see what comes out of it, although the gentleman who had a jews' harp didn't make it through the night, I'm afraid."

The rest is silence

Raising money for charity by not Tweeting or updating Facebook statuses is, surely, little more than sponsored silence 2.0?

It's nice that famous people are pitching in and helping out with Alicia Keys' charity by taking the pledge to not Tweet until a target is met, but there's more than a slight tang of the self-regard about the project:

Grammy-winning singer Keys, 29, said it was "really important and super-cool to use mediums that we naturally are on".

Naturally.

"This is such a direct and instantly emotional way and a little sarcastic, you know, of a way to get people to pay attention," said Keys, who has more than 2.6 million followers on Twitter.

A little sarcastic? Really?

I think the idea is that a Twitter without Lady GaGa is so unimaginable that we'll start selling our hair and kidneys just to persuade her to come back.

Or maybe it isn't. There is some sort of point being made, fuzzily:

Leigh Blake, the president and co-founder of Keep a Child Alive, said: "We're trying to sort of make the remark: 'Why do we care so much about the death of one celebrity as opposed to millions and millions of people dying in the place that we're all from?'"

Although given this story is headline "GaGa among stars quitting Facebook for charity", I don't really think that remark is sort of being made in any way effectively. This is a story about Twitter and celebrities, not about the HIV-hit families in Africa. If that was the real aim, wouldn't getting some of them to Tweet through GaGa's account be much, much more effective?

Apparently you should just sit and take it

@Glastowatch is annoyed about people expressing their frustration:

And so begins the moaning

They link through to a Facebook group which more-or-less grunts its frustration:

glasto ticket fiasco thousands left unhappy people gloating about getting 16 on one person ACCOUNT YET 1000'S TURNED AWAY PREHISTORIC COMPUTER SYSTEM 1 COMPANY TO HANDLE IT..SURELY THIS IS AGAINST WHAT THE TRUE MEANING OF GLASTONBURY IS...JOKE IS NO BETTER THAN TESCO A FILTHY GIANT

Is that really "moaning"? Isn't it understandable frustation? Sure, not everyone who wants tickets will get tickets, but is it really necessary to force them to spend hours on a Sunday morning battering a fallen-over computer system in order to let them down? Is it moaning to expect a company selling tickets that cost well over a hundred quid - and who extracts a healthy 'booking' fee - actually works? Does Glastowatch really think you should just shut up and shrug?

Perhaps if someone took notice of the 'moaning' in the previous years, there wouldn't be a bunch of these ungrateful, whining ticketless ingrates around now?

[UPDATE: This post originally started with a reference to Michael Eavis attacking Seetickets, which was actually me being duped by a fake account.]