Tidal: Artists unite to launch doomed streaming service

A bunch of rich people have come together to launch a video music streaming service:

Alicia Keys, Arcade Fire's Win Butler and Régine Chassagne, Beyoncé, Daft Punk, Jack White, Jason Aldean, J. Cole, Jay Z, Kanye West, Deadmau5, Madonna, Nicki Minaj, Rihanna and Usher – rubbed elbows onstage at the swanky launch event while two others beamed in digitally (Calvin Harris and Coldplay's Chris Martin). Aside from making a spectacle, the musicians made the case for an artist-owned streaming service.

Fun fact: besides being millionaires, most of those people also used to make records at some point.

An artist-owned streaming service isn't a bad idea, it's just that one which is owned by rich, dominant artists isn't really going to do much for the 99% of musicians who don't have to worry about which house they left their other wallet in.

Naturally, the whole thing is being ridiculously oversold:

"We come together before you on this day...with one voice in unity in the hopes that today will be a moment that will forever change the course of music history," said Keys, the only artist to address the audience, in an exuberant speech. "Our goal is simple: We want to create a better service and a better experience for both fans and artists, and that is our promise to the world."

No, you just want to keep a bigger share of the royalties. The world doesn't need you to promise about this sort of thing.

Keys, of course, has been involved in a big tech launch before, having signed on to be the face of Blackberry shortly before that company introduced its 'rotting turd' range of phones.

I know what you're thinking. Is there a risk this event couldn't be self-agrandising enough?

No, they stepped up on that one:

[Keys] explained that the mission statement of the musicians, who stood patiently listening to the speech, was "to preserve music's importance in our lives." She spoke of artists delivering "exclusive experiences" via the service and ultimately finding a way to "preserve" the industry and the value of music. She also quoted Friedrich Nietzsche: "Without music, life would be a mistake."

Although since the point of Tidal is about restricting the flow of music, and when they speak about 'music's importance' what they really mean is 'the price of music to the listener', arguably they're making Nietzsche's mistake more, not less, likely.

But quoting a philosopher beloved of the Nazis might not have ratcheted up the pomposity to the sort of level we'd expect with Madonna and Jack White involved. Could you push it a little further, guys?

"Today is the day," she repeated before inviting her co-owners to sign what she called a "declaration," though she did not expound on what it said. "This is the beginning of a whole new era," she said before each present musician made his or her way over to a podium to sign a document.

Oh, yes. Signing a declaration. Because it's historical, right? That'd do it.

Unfortunately, video of the event wasn't put on YouTube so nobody really noticed this happening.

Alica Keys puts her mouth where her money is

There's a strong call to arms from Alica Keys, refusing to be silenced on political matters:

I know critics will say that people like me should stick to making records. But musicians are voters too. We are artists and we are human, alive to what is going on around us. We seem to be able to connect to millions of people who have either lost faith in the system or who need to feel a part of a community. Music has an uncanny way of getting to people’s emotions. And when we listen to music it is as if the consciousness changes around us. I intend to keep on speaking out, as do a number of my peers. We feel it is our duty to use our fame for something bigger than empty things.

That's pretty impressive.

It's not entirely clear, though, how this high-minded ideal of not using fame for "empty things" fits with, say, the adverts for Givenchy or the promotion of Blackberry mobile phones. Or the USD25million deal to push Coca-Cola's Vitamin Water, a product whose markering was so empty that some people are calling for consumers to be repaid for buying into its faux-healthy image.

But perhaps phone upgrades and water with calories aren't empty. Or maybe those matters had to be attended to before turning attention to using music to connect to emotions.

MTV EMAs shortlist reveals acts prepared to travel to Amsterdam

Oh, MTV's European Music Awards shortlist has been released, revealing who MTV's European PR team think has enough heft to persuade people to watch a music programme on a channel normal dedicated to two reality formats being wrung dry.

If only there was some sort of press release which could, in a pithy phrase, capture a sense of if this is an event which celebrates the new, the challenging and exciting; or merely is the same faces dancing through the same empty struts.

Hang on: what's this?

GREEN DAY RECEIVES THREE MTV EMA NOMINATIONS

Empty struts it is, then.

For the record, here's the dullest list in the world in full:

BEST SONG
Bruno Mars – Locked Out Of Heaven
Daft Punk – Get Lucky (ft. Pharrell Williams)
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis – Thrift Shop (ft. Wanz)
Rihanna – Diamonds
Robin Thicke – Blurred Lines (ft. T.I. & Pharrell)

BEST POP
Justin Bieber
Katy Perry
Miley Cyrus
One Direction
Taylor Swift

BEST FEMALE
Katy Perry
Lady Gaga
Miley Cyrus
Selena Gomez
Taylor Swift

BEST MALE
Bruno Mars
Eminem
Jay Z
Justin Bieber
Justin Timberlake

BEST LIVE
Beyoncé
Green Day
Justin Timberlake
Pink
Taylor Swift

BEST NEW
Bastille
Icona Pop
Imagine Dragons
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis
Rudimental

BEST VIDEO
Justin Timberlake – Mirrors
Lady Gaga – Applause
Miley Cyrus – Wrecking Ball
Robin Thicke – Blurred Lines (ft. T.I. & Pharrell)
Thirty Seconds To Mars – Up In The Air

BEST ROCK
Black Sabbath
Green Day
Kings Of Leon
Queens Of The Stone Age
The Killers

BEST ALTERNATIVE
Arctic Monkeys
Fall Out Boy
Franz Ferdinand
Paramore
Thirty Seconds To Mars

BEST HIP HOP
Drake
Eminem
Jay Z
Kanye West
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis

BEST ELECTRONIC
Afrojack Avicii
Calvin Harris
Daft Punk
Skrillex

BIGGEST FANS
Tokio Hotel
Thirty Seconds To Mars
One Direction
Justin Bieber
Lady Gaga

BEST LOOK
Harry Styles
Justin Timberlake
Lady Gaga
Rihanna
Rita Ora

BEST PUSH
Karmin (October 2012)
Rudimental (November 2012)
Imagine Dragons (January 2013)
A$AP Rocky (February 2013)
Bastille (March 2013)
Austin Mahone (April 2013)
Bridgit Mendler (May 2013)
Tom Odell (June 2013)
Iggy Azalea (July 2013)
Icona Pop (August 2013)
Twenty One Pilots (September 2013)

BEST WORLD STAGE
Alicia Keys – WS Manchester 2012
fun. – WS Rock Am Ring 2013
Garbage - WS Mexico 2012
Green Day – WS Rock Am Ring 2013
Jason Mraz – WS Live In Myanmar 2012
Jessie J – WS Malta 2013
Linkin Park – WS Mexico 2012
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis – WS Wireless 2013
No Doubt – WS Frankfurt 2012
Paramore – WS Rock Am Ring 2013
Rita Ora – WS Malta 2013
Robin Thicke – WS Malaysia 2013
Snoop Lion – WS Durban 2013
The Black Keys – WS NY Webster City Hall 2012
The Killers – WS Big Day Out 2013

Alicia Keys. ALICIA KEYS.

One other observation: Isn't it incredible how quickly a list with fun. on sounds dated?

Half a million quid buys you Alicia Keys

We hear from timemtomtime of Russian oligarchs and potentates of all stripes paying large sums of money to get singers to do a special gig; to the list we can now add, erm, Manchester City Council who MTV somehow managed to persuade to underwrite an Alicia Keys gig. Manchester Confidential has the story:

For one gig in Manchester Cathedral, the ‘City Council contributed £425,000’. 

Why would they do that?

Sara Tomkins, Assistant Chief Executive (Communications Customer and ICT) at Manchester City Council, said: "This event will showcase Manchester around the world. As well as showing the concert itself, MTV are also broadcasting a programme about Manchester's musical heritage and music scene. Taking part in such world-class events strengthens Manchester's position on the world stage as a premier destination for music, entertainment and culture, boosts the local economy and increases the global profile of Manchester as an exciting destination for young adults to visit, work, study and live.   

"Manchester's ability to attract such events is testament to the ambition of the city and we hope to realise further activities in partnership with MTV in the coming years. The show has generated massive coverage across national and international media, including the Washington Post, with an expected media value in excess of £6.6m.”

Let's work backwards, shall we?

The Washington Post website (not the paper) did carry a story about the event, albeit one it just took directly from the AP? Here it is, all four short paragraphs of it.
It does mention Manchester, albeit only twice: once in the byline and once in the name of the MTV programme.

You can't put a price on that sort of coverage.

Really, you can't. It's too slight to measure; it'd come in at the sort of money you get if one of your songs is played on Spotify.

It'd be a struggle to build that sort of coverage up into a package worth £6.6million. You'd be struggling to justify spending the half million for that.

But obviously, there's more. MTV making a show about "Manchester's musical heritage". A thirty minute clip show of Smiths, Joy Division and Oasis. You might wonder if you have such a rich musical heritage, why you need to bribe a music channel to make a programme about it.

But that's where we get to the big problem. I think Manchester might have paid for this gig thinking MTV is synonymous with musical cool. That having a live gig on MTV is a bit like playing football at Wembley, or golf at The Belfrey. It's the centre of the music universe, right?

Not really.

MTV audiences have been declining for years, and even the grand feather in its cap, the VMAs, saw almost a six million drop in audience between 2011 and 2012.

But even when people do find their way to MTV, they're not watching music - remember, a short while ago they officially dropped "music" from their brand to reflect that the channel is now about pregnant teenagers, Snooki, and spoiled children being spoiled further on their sixteenth birthdays.

You know the cartoon in the Guardian Guide this weekend where people turn up at a house converted from a pub asking if they could have a drink there for old time's sake? That's exactly the same as creating music programming for MTV.

Manchester paid for the gig from a ring-fenced cultural budget, so it's not quite turning social work positions into an unwatchable TV show, but you wonder if a city which has had to close the homework clubs at the libraries it hasn't shut couldn't think of a better use for the money.

And even if it did have to burn the cash on getting an event which got a brief mention on the AP newswires, why this gig for this network? The suspicion is that Manchester have bought a very expensive lemon.

[thanks to Morag]

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?

EMI remind you why the music industry is both doomed & despised

There's been a bit of joy in the darkness for the last few weeks, as people have enjoyed the Welsh-positive that parody of Jay-Z and Alicia Keys that was Newport State Of Mind.

Not any more, though. EMI have rushed in to slap a takedown and had YouTube throw the video.

Because, god knows, it must have really been hurting Jay-Z's sales.

Perhaps if EMI spent a bit more time growing its business, rather than going round stealing the kids' balls like they're the grumpy park keeper of the internet, they might not be flailing about in the manner of a binliner caught in a tree.

[Thanks to @electroweb]

Gordon in the morning: Sex And The City was a newspaper column once

To be fair, it's not Gordon's handiwork, but it's leading Bizarre this morning: Coverage of the Sex And The City 2 premiere. The headline?

Sex 'n the totty

Totty? Are you serious? Are we only minutes away from 'bint' turning up in headlines?

Gordon, meanwhile, is suffering from a shock:

KASABIAN'S SERGE PIZZORNO has followed in the footsteps of bandmate TOM MEIGHAN and chopped off his locks.

The crop-topped guitarist showed off his new style at last night's Black Ball, thrown by ALICIA KEYS, to raise funds for her HIV children's charity.

The new hairdo is a shock, but I'm sure we'll get used to it.

What a pity the SATC premiere clashed with the 'man gets haircut' - a busy news day indeed.

Serge and the lads did a cracking set with Alicia after a fancy beef dinner.

"A fancy beef dinner"? What? "Oooh, look, horseradish sauce."

Alicia Keys gets recut

Hey, you. Yes, you. You think you know Alicia Keys? Think again, because she's, like, totally changed direction:

Alicia Keys Tells Fans To 'Expect The Unexpected' On New LP

Stores already report panic buying of sou'westers and absorbent shoes amongst Keys' core fans as they prepare to cope with this astonishing new direction.

Keys explains that she might very well be about to launch an album of Germanic Murder Punk:

"You can expect, like, to be moved," she said. "You can expect to really be into a zone. I think you can expect the unexpected cause there's going to be things that you're going to be like, 'Wow, is that her? Is that her?' And I love that about it. You can definitely expect to see major growth, but you're going to fall in love with this album."

Just because it sounds to you like she can't actually think of any way that the new album is going to be different from all the others doesn't mean that it's going to be like all the rest but with a few extra notes crammed into the long words. Oh no.

Keys stubs out the fag sponsors

So, are we to believe that Alicia Keys was unaware of the sponsorship of her Jakarta gig by Philip Morris, or just unaware that anyone would notice until the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids started to make a fuss?

Now, the adverts for the ciggies are being taken down - although it's not clear if the concert is still being underwritten by the cigarette manufacturer. And Keys has issued a statement:

"I apologize for any misleading advertising initially associated with the show," she said in a statement released by her record label, Sony BMG. "I am an unyielding advocate for the well-being of children around the world and do not condone or endorse smoking.

"I look forward to bringing my music and message to my wonderful fans in Jakarta."

It's funny, that - so desperately anti-smoking, and yet somehow her gig has been promoting it in Jakarta. You'd have to wonder how that could happen without her knowing.

Quantum leaps

So, not Winehouse. Not Duffy. The next Bond theme will be done by Alicia Keys and Jack White. It's a duet, you see - the first time the Bond theme has been done as a duet, which we're given to understand is in some way significant.

The pairing seems a little clunky, but we expect they had Keys signed up before realising they'd need someone who could think of a rhyme for Quantum. And Solace.

Keys told to keep quiet

Alicia Keys' European tour is on hold; apparently doctors have told her to "rest her voice". So far Glasgow and Manchester are being rescheduled.

There's news and then there's NEWS

MTV has some exciting news which popped up on its RSS feeds a shortwhile ago:

Alicia Keys recently shot a fitting video for her next single, "Like You'll Never See Me Again."

A fitting video, eh? What a refreshing change from all those artists who make completely inappropriate videos for their singles.

Alicia Keys: "I had gay hair"

Not, of course, that Alicia Keys would resort to a spot of lazy stereotyping of lesbians, but she reckons people think she's gay because she used to look a bit rough:

"I was definitely rough around the edges. I look back at certain interviews and I'm like, 'Damn! Did I have to look that hard? Did I have to do my hair that way?'

"I could see why people couldn't see the diamond in the rough.

"I didn't take it to heart. I know what I am. I know it's not true."

And, ahem, Alicia, it's not a bad thing to be anyway. Actually.