I collect, I reject: Bobbleheads

A message arrives from a retailer of bobbleheads, announcing a new toy in the range:

The [name redacted] figures have finally arrived (we just took this photo on the right). We apologize for the delay, but Drastic Plastic did an amazing job with her likeness and details.

Ah, yes. The delay while the bobblehead manufacturers were doing such a great job.

Here's their work:

Any ideas?

Apparently meant to be Debbie Harry.

Christmas lights left to carry season alone after Brian McFadden is a no-show

Heartbreaking times at the Trafford Centre in Trafford, as Brian McFadden gets stuck in traffic on the motorway and fails to turn up to do a couple of songs at the Christmas lights switch-on:

He was due to take the stage at 6:20pm bosses said but didn't arrive at the centre until shortly after 7pm by which time the lights had been switched on and bosses said it was too late for him to perform.

He has now apologised and pledged to return in the near future.

He tweeted: "Sorry to everyone at the trafford lights. Took 6 1/2 hours from london. Arrived 3 minutes late but trafford centre wouldnt wait. Sorry"

It's almost as if the management of the mall didn't really want McFadden to play - presumably if he'd turned up on time, a caretaker would have been sent down to suck teeth and say 'no, sorry, mate, not in those shoes on this surface'.

Still, the evening wasn't a total washout:

The lights were switched on by Coronation Street Natalie Gumede who is currently appearing in the latest series of Strictly Come Dancing.

She was joined at the event by her dance partner in the show Artem Chigvintsev.

Earlier there were performances from bands The Hoosiers and The Overtones as well as Richard and Adam from Britain's Got Talent.

You can imagine once you've sat through The Hoosiers and The Overtones you might start to be cooling on the idea of hearing anyone else sing again, ever.

Metal fans like new things; don't like themselves

The journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts has just published a report which explores what people who like "contemporary metal" are really like.

The conclusion?

A multiple regression showed that stronger composite preference for the heavy metal tracks was associated with higher Openness to Experience, more negative attitudes toward authority, lower self-esteem, greater need for uniqueness, and lower religiosity. In addition, men showed a significantly stronger preference for the tracks than women

I think that last sentence means that men, rather than women, showed a preference for the tracks, but given that the survey seems to be 'everything you sniggered about metal fans is true', it could mean that male metallers prefer Girlschool to girls.

[Finder's fee: Brooklyn Vegan]

I collect, I reject: Looking for somewhere to store your Joy Division oven gloves?

Ian Curtis' kitchen table is up for sale on eBay.

At the moment, it's over £6,000, which means its already three times the original budget of the ruinously expensive Factory Records boardroom table. And with five days to go, it might wind up costing more than that table eventually did...

Did Twitter remember Twitter Music in its IPO?

Does anyone, to be fair, remember Twitter Music?

So when Twitter went to market this week, did the company make anything of the super-duper service that has literally revolutionised how we ignore new music discovery channels?

Yes, but you have to read through to page 110 to get to it:

#Music. #Music is a mobile application that helps users discover new music and artists based on Tweets. #Music is available on the iOS platform. #Music uses data from the Twitter API to surface trending music artists in a variety of genres, and allows users to browse through artists based on social relationships on Twitter. We do not currently place, or currently plan to place, ads on #Music.

"Not currently planning to place adverts" seems to be a face-saving way of saying that the service is of use to neither man nor drummer, doesn't it?

Oooh, Betty: Whitey asks TV company why he should work for nothing

Betty TV are making one of their exciting new TV series - probably something about someone young and sexy being sexy, or possibly about someone not young and sexy having their insecurities exploited for an hour on the telly - and thought Whitey might like to be part of it.

Obviously, they weren't going to pay. Whitey was, understandably, unhappy:

"I am sick to death of your hollow schtick, of the inevitable line 'unfortunately there's no budget for music', as if some fixed law of the universe handed you down a sad but immutable financial verdict preventing you from budgeting to pay for music. Your company set out the budget. So you have chosen to allocate no money for music. I get begging letters like this every week – from a booming, affluent global media industry.

Why is this? Let's look at who we both are.

I am a professional musician, who lives from his music. It took me half a lifetime to learn the skills, years to claw my way up the structure, to the point where a stranger like you will write to me. This music is my hard-earned property. I've licensed music to some of the biggest shows, brands, games and TV production companies on earth; from Breaking Bad to The Sopranos, from Coca-Cola to Visa, HBO to Rockstar Games.

Ask yourself – would you approach a creative or a director with a resume like that, and in one flippant sentence ask them to work for nothing? Of course not. Because your industry has a precedent of paying these people, of valuing their work.

Or would you walk into someone's home, eat from their bowl, and walk out smiling, saying, "So sorry, I've no budget for food"? Of course you would not. Because, culturally, we classify that as theft.

Yet the culturally ingrained disdain for the musician that riddles your profession leads you to fleece the music angle whenever possible. You will without question pay everyone connected to a shoot – from the caterer to the grip to the extra – even the cleaner who mopped your set and scrubbed the toilets after the shoot will get paid. The musician? Give him nothing.

Now let's look at you. A quick glance at your website reveals a variety of well-known, internationally syndicated reality programmes. You are a successful, financially solvent and globally recognised company with a string of hit shows. Working on multiple series in close co-operation with Channel 4, from a west London office, with a string of awards under your belt. You have real money; to pretend otherwise is an insult.

Yet you send me this shabby request – give me your property for free. Just give us what you own, we want it.

The answer is a resounding and permanent NO.

I will now post this on my sites, forward this to several key online music sources and blogs, encourage people to reblog this. I want to see a public discussion begin about this kind of industry abuse of musicians … this was one email too far for me. Enough. I'm sick of you.

NJ White

Betty - which is part of Discovery - has found time between shooting episodes of 'Look How Poor People Live' and 'Look At How Rich People Live And Do The Sex' to issue a statement of their own:

A Betty spokesperson said: "We use a collective licensing system that ensures both the recording artist and composer are paid. We apologise for any confusion and we have contacted the artist to clarify this. We would never use music without permission and going through the proper procedures."

Odd that; Whitey clearly understands the licensing business, yet Betty thinks its request has "confused" him. Odd.

Robin Thicke gets people shouting at him in the street

I'm not surprised that people yell stuff at Robin Thicke in the street.

Oddly, though, he seems to think they're confusing him with someone else:

The 36-year-old singer - who is 18 years younger than the 'X Factor' boss - often gets heckled in the street by people shouting ''Simon'' at him because they think he is the music mogul due to their similar haircuts.

He said: ''I went through a hippy phase when I started out in music and said I would not cut my hair until I heard my song played on the radio. Now I do get called Simon Cowell because of my hair.''

(Lets be generous, and assume that quote was merely poorly edited rather than quite than incoherent.)

"I mean... it must be that people think I'm Simon Cowell, right? That's why they're calling out 'exploitative little wank biscuit' and 'soulless crumb-tray on the end of a life-sapping stick', right? They think I'm Cowell, yeah?"

Gennaro Castaldo Watch: Softcore porn is business

Ah, we hadn't heard from Gennaro Castaldo since he left HMV. He did leave HMV, although he hasn't updated his LinkedIn profile. Perhaps like other parts of the HMV social universe, the password was handed to an intern and never surrendered?

Anyway, you can't keep a good thought-wrangler down and we've got the first sighting of him in his new home, defending porny pop videos for new employers, the BPI.

He appeared on ITV news:

Explicit music videos should be made available to the public in a responsible age-appropriate way but should not be banned completely, Gennaro Castaldo of the British Recorded Music Industry told ITV News.

Now, obviously, there are music videos which are explicit because the music they represent is explicit - and banning things is bad. I guess that far we can go with Gennaro.

The problem, though, is that the music industry is using sexist sexy videos for songs they're aiming largely at kids. That's what we need to talk about, surely, and the conversation Gennaro didn't seem interested in having:

"We have been speaking to digital service providers about whether they could introduce age-based filters. That could be one way of solving this problem," Mr Castaldo said.

"Rather than trying to stop content by banning or censoring it, it’s about how to make it available in a responsible fashion."

You see? The problem isn't the music industry selling Robin Thicke by getting women to show their tits, it's the fault of "digital service providers" for not stopping kids from seeing it.

This is similar to the way that guns don't kill people, it's people failing to have bulletproof skin that kills people.

But, hey, just to drift further from the point, maybe a spot of meaningless cultural relativism could help?

Mr Castaldo said the industry takes the issue extremely seriously, but pointed out that "values move" on and that "back in the 50s, people were scandalised by Elvis Presley."

Yes, Gennaro. Values move on. Back in the 70s, people thought it was okay to sell any product - cars, nuts, shock absorbers - by sticking a woman in a bikini into an advert. We've moved on from there. When will the BPI join us?

Eminem doesn't do social media

You won't find Eminem on the social networks, you know:

Asked if he is on social media platforms, Eminem jokes: "I am on social media all day. In front of a computer, blogging constantly. Yo, does someone got my laptop?"

He then explains that he tries to avoid social media in order to avoid confrontations. "I really try not to pay attention," he says. "Put it this way, I want to keep my finger on the pulse of what's going on, so I don't want to be ignorant in that sense. But at the same time, I can't pay attention to what everyone is saying. I would never be able to make music, I don't think, if I got caught up in that. Because I would probably get caught up in some ugly arguments with people. 'Yo, drive to my house now.' It would consume a lot of my time and it would be very counter-productive for me to do that. But I still do, and that's what's fucked up."

Yes, if there's one thing we know about Eminem it's that he hates having his arguments in public.

Here's a philosophical question, though: There's an Eminem verified Twitter account which is quite busy. But if Eminem happily admits that he doesn't get involved in social media, in what sense is the identity of the Eminem account "verified"? If someone takes that blue tick as a sign that it's really Eminem, are they being misled? Ought there to be a different symbol to show it's really the brand, not the man?

Bob Geldof and Bono: Perhaps they spent the interval talking truth to power

I know we don't need any further evidence that Geldof and Bono's outsider act is, well, an act, but in case you're still looking to be convinced, who turned up for Matthew Freud's birthday in what for most people would be the 'clown making balloon animals' slot?:

Guests thought to include Davina McCall and Jimmy Carr were treated to a performance from Bob Geldof and U2 frontman Bono. The duo joined forces to perform a rendition of Martha and the Vandellas’ Dancing in the Street.

Amongst the revellers were the Blairs, Cameron and Osborne.

But I'm sure Bob and Bono were thinking about the poor the whole time they did it.

YouTube Music Awards

There are rush-hour Underground Circle line trains which are less overcrowded than the music awards season, so the arrival of yet another set of prizes is less a cause for celebration than the organisers of The YouTube Music Awards might think.

Here, lifted from Hypebot (who sat through the live-streamed event and deserve a medal of their own for that dedication to duty) are the winners:

Breakthrough of the Year
WINNER: Macklemore & Ryan Lewis
Kendrick Lamar
Naughty Boy
Passenger
Rudimental

Response of the Year
WINNER: Lindsey Stirling and Pentatonix, "Radioactive"
Boyce Avenue (feat. Fifth Harmony) "Mirrors"
Jayesslee, "Gangnam Style"
ThePianoGuys, "Titanium/Pavane"
Walk Off the Earth (feat. KRNFX), "I Knew You Were Trouble"

Innovation of the Year
WINNER: DeStorm, "See Me Standing"
Anamanaguchi, "Endless Fantasy"
Atoms For Peace, "Ingenue"
Bat For Lashes, "Lilies"
Toro Y Moi, "Say That"

YouTube Phenomenon
WINNER: "I Knew You Were Trouble"
"Diamonds"
"Gangnam Style"
"Harlem Shake"
"Thrift Shop"

Video of the Year
WINNER: Girls' Generation "I Got A Boy"
Demi Lovato, "Heart Attack"
Epic Rap Battles Of History, "Barack Obama vs Mitt Romney"
Justin Bieber (feat. Nicki Minaj), "Beauty and a Beat"br> Lady Gaga, "Applause"
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis (feat. Mary Lambert) "Same Love"
Miley Cyrus, "We Can't Stop"
One Direction, "Best Song Ever"
PSY, "Gentleman"
Selena Gomez, "Come & Get It"

Artist of the Year
WINNER: Eminem
Epic Rap Battles Of History
Justin Bieber
Katy Perry
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis
Nicki Minaj
One Direction
Psy
Rihanna
Taylor Swift

The most notable surprise here is that Harlem Shake was only this year - and yet already mention of it sits alongside 'chocolate coming off the ration' and 'that bloke blowing the candle out on the first night of BBC Two' in the distant past.

The silver Orb

The Orb are 25 years old - and if that doesn't make you wince like the onset of an arthritic knee, you were probably born after them. To celebrate, they're doing a box set.

The box set will consist of four discs, which kind of implies they'll only have space for A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules from the Centre of the Ultraworld.

Radio One will be saved by, er, rebranding 60 Seconds on BBC Three

Radio One is suffering something of a decline in listening - in part because Chris Moyles' departure took a chunk of audience who weren't core, but still counted; in part because young people have their phones and Twitter Music and cassette tapes and have no need to listen to radio at all.

Time for a fightback. MediaGuardian's got the plans:

The BBC's director general, Tony Hall, has also indicated he wants to see more collaboration between the station and its similarly youth-oriented TV sibling, BBC3, including the rebranding of BBC3's news as a TV extension of Newsbeat.

"Hey, kids, put down your Spotify playlists, because this radio station has a news bulletin the same as the one that interrupts American Dad marathons."

Here's what Hall said when in front of the Commons media select committee:

"One of the areas I want to develop is how BBC3 and Radio 1 can work much more together, with Radio 1 concentrating much more on music and BBC3 on other genres," Hall said. "We have a news service on BBC3. We don't call it anything, yet we have Newsbeat on Radio 1. Why not take Newsbeat and run that across the two? The controllers of BBC3 [Zai Bennett] and Radio 1 have more work to do to see how together these two channels, stations, can [find] a younger audience."

Pssst, Tony... your news service on BBC Three is called "Sixty Seconds". It's been called that since before there was a BBC Three. Still, twelve years isn't much time for that name to stick, is it?

The other big plan is for a Radio One channel on iPlayer. This idea - that digitally, a Radio One TV service would be possible - is even older than Sixty Seconds; it was part of the original proposals for BBC Digital services back in the early 1980s. Still, baby steps, eh?

BPI, RIAA ignore licence terms on their website until it's pointed out to them

Interesting: copyright farmers the RIAA and their remote-controlled UK equivalent the BPI have been caught using code on their websites which violates the licences of that code.

TorrentFreak has been poking about in the source:

The websites of music industry groups RIAA and BPI also use infringing code.

On both sites we found open source JQuerys scripts that are released under the MIT license. This license permits any person or organization to use, copy, modify, merge, distribute, or even sell copies of the software. There’s only one condition users have to agree to; that the original copyright notice stays intact.

Ironically, the scripts used on the RIAA and BPI websites have the copyright licenses removed.

BPI uses the depreciated template script jQuery.tmpl.min.js, and as can be seen below, yesterday there was no reference to the MIT license or the copyright holder listed at the top of the file.

Oddly, after TF contacted the RIAA, the copyright line appeared magically on the RIAA and BPI sites.

The 1975 have a pop at Borrell

Hey, Matt Healy, we don't come down your factory stealing your work, do we?

Asked by The Guardian whether he worries about success turning him into a "complete wanker", Healy replied: "No, I don't. We're not worried about becoming a bunch of wankers because the people who become wankers were always gonna become wankers. Johnny Borrell is a wanker because he's a wanker, not because Razorlight got massive."

There's two problems with this thesis - first, Razorlight got fairly big, but a large portion of their status comes from it being incredibly useful to have a one-man punchline to hand. You can't let something like that slip through your fingers. In part, Johnny Borrell is well-known because he can be a bit wanky.

Secondly, while it's true that Borrell might have been wanky without having had a number one single over half a decade ago, can we be sure that he would have reached his peak wankiness without selling a few records to Ocean Colour Scene fans who'd decided to try to get themselves girlfriends?

If Borrell had, say, followed a career path to become an under-manager at a branch of Marks And Spencers, do we really believe he'd have his shirt off and a pair of white jeans on, pulling the 'battery hen Mick Jagger diorama' pose whenever he saw a camera? Seems unlikely.

Fred Durst moves on to second TV series

There's no denying that Fred Durst is a pretty hot property in television right now. Why, before CBS have even aired a single episode of his much-ballyhooed sitcome Douchebag, he's off and busily developing a drama series.

While Douchebag, the sitcom that never made it to screen, was loosely based on Fred's life as a man who was too old to be doing what he does even when he was doing it back then, the drama - The Noise - will be loosely based on Fred's life.

Yes, The Noise. Oh, it's not even an open goal, is it? It's like he's putting the balls on the goal line, and then leaving the field entirely. THE NOISE.

Actually, it's not quite the same series - Douchebag was about a cartoon rocker who was trying to adjust to family life, while The Noise is about someone fleeing to cartoon rock to escape family life.

If the series is ever picked up, there will eventually be an episode where the Durst character pitches a sitcom based on his life.

It's CBS who will be looking at the script and wondering if it's best to just ask him to come back with a pitch for a quiz show based on Durst's life sometime round 2015. Presumably called Rockerz.

[Massive thanks to @Pedro_Dee for the tip]

Churches scoop Popjustice Prize

If they're over in one part of London praising the "best" album of the year, that means elsewhere, Popjustice will be hosting the annual £20 Popjustice Music Prize for best single.

They are better at choosing singles than the Mercury people are at choosing albums, as this won:

Luckily, nobody called them Crutches or anything, either.

Mercury Music Prize 2013 hit by awkward name embarrassment

There was an awkward moment during the live televising of last night's Mercury Music Prize, with a slip-up being made around the winner's name.

"It was mortifying" explained one of the judges. "We tried to say the name 'David Bowie' but somehow it came out as 'James Blake', who is, of course, quite a different person.

Seriously, you can understand Lauren Laverne accidentally muddling her nice-chap-but-dull-musicians up, because they have pretty similar names. All she did was replace "ake" with "unt" - admittedly, that would have been terrible if Cake had been the winners.

BBC World News' coverage of the prize last night ended with the optimistic claim that Blake can now expect a higher profile and a rise in sales. You could hear Speech Debelle's "huh" from this side of the Atlantic.

Blake has pledged not to piss the £20,000 prize money for Overgrown up a wall. But then he does have the aura of a man who has a portfolio of ISA investments, doesn't he?

Grimes defends playing in Russia because Putin wasn't going to go see her anyway, or something

With Russia an increasingly intolerant place to be bisexual, gay, lesbian or anything else non-Putin-approved, it was something of a surprise to see Grimes happily booking a date there. She has thought it through, though:

response to twitter criticisms of the show in russia

Yes, I am playing in Moscow in 2 days and no, i do not feel bad about it. I don’t think that denying and ignoring the gay community in russia is cool. I have gay friends in russia and the only strait person on the Grimes team is james as far as i know lol.

We are entering safely and it means the world to me to be returning 2 russia. It doesn’t hurt the government if I refuse to tour there. Just regular people. So i don’t think it’s wrong to be doing this. Refusing to go to russia would only hurt fans

also - this is a private event. fans should know that ill be back for a bigger show when i finish the record that will be open to the public

siiick so stoked! cya soon ^_^

<3

Ah, it would hurt "regular people" to not play the gig which, erm, isn't open to regular people anyway. That's pretty clear.

Do we need to run through once again the way cultural boycotts work, or can we just assume that Grimes understands but doesn't accept the idea that when nations behave in unacceptable ways, you don't just pretend it isn't happening?

Grimes: very much the Paul Simon of her generation.

Jonas Brothers: They split

The most striking thing about the Jonas Brothers split is the video of the Jonases: looking for all the world like junior chief executives, the question was surely how they'd managed to keep things together for so long.

They didn't look like a band who had creative differences with each other; they looked like a group of people who had differences with the very idea of being creative.

It wasn't the end of a pop group; it was the release of three trapped people back into the community.

Let's wish them well.

Katy Perry calls for pop stars to keep their clothes on

Katy Perry, talking to NPR, is starting to wonder if we're not seeing too much of some people too often:

And a lot of people see me as a role model but I’d like to kind of turn that around and say I appreciate that but I’d like to be seen as an inspiration. Because a role model, I think, will fail you. I mean, I couldn’t tell kids when it’s time for them to try things or do things. I mean, that’s not my role. But, you know, it’s funny. I do see myself becoming this, whatever, inspiration out of default right now, ’cause it’s such a strange world. Like females in pop – everybody’s getting naked. I mean, I’ve been naked before but I don’t feel like I have to always get naked to be noticed.

"I've been naked before" is something of an understatement from a woman who once shot whipped cream out of her bra.

I’m not talking about anyone in particular. I’m talking about all of them. I mean, it’s like everybody’s so naked. It’s like put it away. We know you’ve got it. I got it too. I’ve taken it off for – I’ve taken it out here and there. And I’m not necessarily judging. I’m just saying sometimes it’s nice to play that card but also it’s nice to play other cards. And I know I have that sexy card in my deck but I don’t always have to use that card.

It's good, I guess, that Perry is able to at least pre-empt the raised eyebrow by flicking through her previous photoshoots, but it still has the air of McDonalds chiding Burger King for selling junk food.

"I've obviously sold burgers, but it's good to know I don't have to sell burgers all the time" said Ronald McDonald, pointing to that one time a kid actually went for the carrot sticks.

HMV launches plans to defeat iTunes; realises it needs iTunes to be part of the plans

So, although it looked like it wouldn't make it through to offer confused elderly relatives a place to buy not quite the right CDs for the young 'uns this Christmas, HMV has survived in some form. Shrunk down, owned by a group known for restructuring; historical debts erased. Now, at last, the chain can focus on its unique selling point - being the only place you can go to buy recorded entertainment left standing. Right?

Hang on, they've just announced the completion of their image makeover. What did you guys come up with - something about your stores, right?

HMV has overhauled its online presence with a new, more editorially-focused site as it looks to re-exert its brand authority and customer experince through online channels.

Oh. Really? You're still thinking your a business which really has a future in being some sort of chatty webmagazine with some 'buy' buttons attached?

Why would you think that?

HMV chairman Paul McGowan said: “Everything we’re doing with HMV is focused on engagement, content and curation – all the things that HMV lost sight of in recent years.

“The passion within the business for the products we sell, the specialist knowledge and ability to recommend and guide our customers – from store staff to the team in head office – is second to none and the new hmv.com. brings that to the forefront.”

Did you ever go into an HMV before you bought the company, Paul? With all the best will in the world, nobody would ever have gone into an HMV store to ask musical advice from the staff, any more than you'd expect to get agricultural advice from the people who restock the dairy counters in Tesco. That's not to say that there weren't some HMV assistants who weren't passionate about music, but those that wee generally would have advised you to shop elsewhere.

The brand has recruited an editorial team to manage the site, while staff across the company’s chain of 142 UK stores will also be encouraged to contribute with content.

Given the PR disaster which followed HMV staff retaining access to official HMV channels that's quite a brave move.

However, at least this is something that you've fully thought through, right? It's not in any way a ragbag of half-formed ideas with a promise of better things to come, is it?

HMV general manager Caroline Pesch said: “As a hub for entertainment, a key element of the site is the sense of community and ease of use for finding local and relevant information. In addition to editorial features and reviews store staff can post their own picks and tips based on what’s happening on a local level. This is just phase one of the new site; as it develops we will be introducing lots more new and exciting functionality. The volume of content available will grow daily.”

Oh. Nothing says 'some stuff got written on a white board, and we think someone took a photo, and we're pretty certain there's something there we might be able to turn into some sort of web feature when we work out what the bloody thing says' like a vague suggestion that something "new and exciting" is coming in the future.

There's also an app, which Wired has heard all about:

[James] Coughlan, who was previously involved in building up Vodafone's digital music business, is first to admit that HMV has in the past "not really embraced the digital world in the way it should have done".

Yeah, that was Vodafone's digital music business that he built up. Because music is the first thing you think of when you hear Vodafone's name. Well, first thing after you've thought 'oh, the company that pretends its legally obliged to pay as little tax as possible'. And 'irritating bee commercials'. And 'spun off a military business'. But then, surely, you'd start to think about Vodafone's music.

There is, to be fair, a Vodafone Music twitter feed, which hasn't had a message since October 2nd. Erm, October 2nd, 2009. And vodafone.com/music just redirects to the Vodafone homepage. You can find out about Vodafone music, though, by searching on the site:

Vodafone Music has now closed
Vodafone Music is now closed, so you won’t be able to download any music from us anymore.

That's a pretty solid business built up there, then.

Never mind, though, James is now bringing his magic to HMV:

"What we're doing here by bringing a digital offering to market is we're amplifying what HMV's renowned for," he tells Wired.co.uk. "I see this lifting our physical business as well, because you probably are going to have experiences where you're in store and you're scanning physical products and the digital version may be a couple of quid higher than the physical copy you've got in your hand."

Interesting. The idea of having an app which appears to tell you that HMV's pricing policy is all over the place. Not entirely sure how advertising that your digital downloads are overpriced is really going to help, but you can't fault the honesty.

Still, Coughlan is at least dedicated to the idea of digital music. Isn't he?

Coughlan still believes that nothing really compares to holding a physical record

Oh.

But... he can at least tolerate the digital world, presumably?

"I fully support streaming and I think what it's done for the music business has been good. It's certainly ticked the box for the labels in being seen to act on what was going on over the last ten years with the likes of Napster and illegal downloads and doing their own education with the youth audience as to actually there is a value to music."

I'm not sure that sentence actually contained proper thoughts, so it'd probably be churlish to point out that Napster - the illegal version - closed down well over ten years ago. And that, arguably, streaming has done far more to undermine the traditional music business model by replacing the sense that music is a thing you collect and own than filesharing ever did.

Wired does praise something Coughlan has managed to arrange:

HMV has also managed to strike a deal with Apple that lets users download songs from the app straight into their iPhone's music library -- a first for a service other than iTunes.

Brilliant, right?

Except, almost as soon as the app launched last week, it vanished from the iTunes store. It turned out that if there was a deal with Apple, it fell apart pretty quickly:

Apple confirmed to The Guardian that the app was removed for "violating App Store guidelines", pointing to clause 11.13 in those guidelines: "Apps using IAP to purchase physical goods or goods and services used outside of the application will be rejected".

Early days for the fightback, though. And HMV does still have some stores on the High Street. Apple can't take that away from them.

Although a couple of the shops might be well placed for flogging iPhones from...

Lou Reed: A quick round-up

The front page of USA Today this morning records the passing of Lou Reed:

'Underground' visionary dies at 71

The quote marks round underground probably a reflection that underground artists tend not to get front page coverage on their passing.

(Also: when someone is about to be buried, probably want to use word other than 'underground' to describe them.)

A lot of writers struggle to describe Reed's style - obviously, you know it when you hear it, but when you're trying to capture that for future generations, how do boil it down? The New York Times' Ben Ratliff attempts to pin it to Lou's early days deviating from doo-wop:

Not too long after his first recordings, made at 16 with a doo-wop band in Freeport, N.Y., Mr. Reed started singing outside of the song’s melody, as if he were giving a speech with a fluctuating drone in a New York accent. That sound, heard with the Velvet Underground on songs like “Heroin” and “Sweet Jane” and in his post-Velvet songs “Walk on the Wild Side,” “Street Hassle” and others, became one of the most familiar frequencies in rock. He played lead guitar the same way, straining against his limitations.

In the LA Times, Randall Roberts opens by admitting that, actually, it's all been said before, and much better, and more succinctly:

Those looking for one version of Lou Reed's life need look no further than to the late critic Lester Bangs, who presented a particularly harsh, if affectionate, take on the artist's story in a single sentence.

"Lou Reed is the guy that gave dignity and poetry and rock 'n' roll to smack, speed, homosexuality, sadomasochism, murder, misogyny, stumblebum passivity, and suicide, and then proceeded to belie all his achievements and return to the mire by turning the whole thing into a monumental joke ...," wrote Reed's longtime sparring partner Bangs in 1975.

It doesn't stop Roberts from having a go at adding to the pile himself, though:

Reed was the snake with the apple, bringing into rock's lexicon new thematic temptations — "Venus in Furs," "I'm Waiting for the Man," "Lady Godiva's Operation," "The Gift" tackle harsh truths — and fresh textures of noise.

Over at Slate, the occasion of Reed's passing is seen as the perfect moment to try and slap a label on his sexual orientation:

Soon after Lou Reed’s death at age 71 on Sunday, Rostam Batmanglij of Vampire Weekend tweeted that the legendary rock star was “maybe the first out songwriter,” an allusion to his purported bisexuality. During his lifetime, Reed was famous for his sybaritic pursuits and unorthodox lifestyle. But was he bisexual?

This piece is headed "Was Lou Reed the first openly bisexual rock star?" That the piece doesn't earn its question mark by considering if there were any earlier openly bi musicians pretty much undermines its whole point: if you're asking a question if someone was an out bisexual, then pretty much not out. Reed, specifically when asked by Lester Bangs about bisexuality, said this:

The notion that everybody's bisexual is a very popular line right now, but I think its validity is limited. I could say something like if in any way my album helps people decide who or what they are, then I will feel I have accomplished something in my life. But I don't feel that way at all. ... You can't listen to a record and say, “Oh that really turned me onto gay life, I'm gonna be gay.” A lot of people will have one or two experiences, and that'll be it. Things may not change one iota. ... By the time a kid reaches puberty they've been determined. Guys walking around in makeup is just fun. Why shouldn't men be able to put on makeup and have fun like women have?

That quote, by the way, taken from the Slate article itself.

Clearly Lou had sex with lots of people, and didn't use gender as starting point. But equally clearly, he never chose to identify himself as bisexual. Ergo, he wasn't the first out bisexual rock star.

The Daily Mirror dips into Twitter to round-up reactions, and it's possible they read some of them before publishing, too:

Comedy writer David Quantick tweeted: “RIP Lou Reed. This, by him with John Cale, is one of the most beautiful things ever made.”

They don't have the video, or even a link to it. Without which, it doesn't make much sense, and does mean that the Mirror has effectively left Quntick as saying 'RIP Lou Reed'.

This is how that tweet should have looked:

RIP Lou Reed. This, by him with John Cale, is one of the most beautiful things ever made: http://t.co/YyQyCEwvfT

— David Quantick (@quantick) October 27, 2013

Still, that's not the worst thing about the Mirror's coverage; while most Twitter reaction is lobbed onto a single page, one expert commentator's tweet gets a whole page to itself:

Lou Reed: Simon Cowell tweets that he is "so sad" to hear about death of music legend

Cowell's tweet followed another on his account which read: "you realise without great people you have nothing"

Having Cowell's opinion on Lou Reed is like hearing from a persistent stain what it feels about Persil.

Alexis Petridis in The Guardian tries an opening which is, in effect, a get-out-of-jail for any following overstatements:

When a famous rock star dies, there's a natural tendency among fans and journalists alike to overstate the late figure's importance: the former out of grief, the latter because it makes better copy.

In Lou Reed's case, that's almost impossible to do, just as it's almost impossible to imagine what rock music might sound like had the Velvet Underground never existed.

Almost impossible to overstate...

Elvis, Beatles and Dylan fans might be wont to disagree, but there's a compelling argument that their 1967 debut The Velvet Underground And Nico is the single most influential album in rock history. Certainly, it's hard to think of another record that altered the sound and vocabulary of rock so dramatically, that shifted its parameters so far at a stroke.

Vast tranches of subsequent pop music exist entirely in its shadow: it's possible that glam rock, punk, and everything that comes loosely bracketed under the terms indie and alt-rock might have happened without it, but it's hard to see how.

... but let's give it a go anyway.

Rolling Stone also really, really rates that 'and Nico' album:

"Produced" by Warhol and met with total commercial indifference when it was released in early 1967, VU’s debut The Velvet Underground & Nico stands as a landmark on par with the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Bob Dylan's Blonde On Blonde. Reed's matter-of-fact descriptions of New York’s bohemian demimonde, rife with allusions to drugs and S&M, pushed beyond even the Rolling Stones’ darkest moments, while the heavy doses of distortion and noise for its own sake revolutionized rock guitar.

Oddly, last year Rolling Stone was able to think of twelve better albums when compiling its greatest albums of all times. But of course Reed hadn't just died at that point. (It did allow it was bit better than Abbey Road, although not as good as Rubber Soul, and nowhere near Sgt Peppper.)

So, a lot of use of the word "dark", quite a bit about sex, a sudden elevation from 'fairly influential' to 'pretty sure he invented music, if not metal and also machines'. Reed always was a difficult person to nail down without breaking out Capstan-strength cliche.

The award for the worst piece of writing on the day of his death, though, must go to sportal.com.au, in its rugby league coverage:

Tenuous links to the World Cup
Lou Reed's death was felt by distant relative (we think) Jack Reed. The Brisbane and England centre (Jack, not Lou) was ruled out of the World Cup due to injury.

Even allowing for the admission of a tenuous link in the headline, that makes no sense at all.

Legendobit: Lou Reed

It took me a while to warm to Lou Reed - probably because The Velvets were always spoken about in such hushed tones by the little-bit-older boys it was kinda off-putting.

(And the idea of warming to Lou Reed is a bit like cuddling a salt-lick in the first place.)

But one Sunday afternoon, listening to On The Wire, Fenny played a song, and I was riveted.

For me, New York will always be the definitive Lou Reed album. And this is why:


Lou Reed Dies at 71: Rolling Stone

[From five years ago: A Weekend In New York]

Rolling Stone pretends to misunderstand that not all doctors are medical

When Rolling Stone put an alleged terrorist on its front cover to illustrate a perfectly reasonable current affairs story, there was an outrage-bundle so huge you could see it from eight miles away.

However, when Rolling Stone does this...:

As if he hadn't already proved it countless times with his surgically precise songwriting and the healing power of his gift for melody, Elvis Costello can now call himself a doctor of music.

... nobody seems bothered.

Despite the fact that Rolling Stone knows full well that while doctorates and medicine can overlap, they're not exclusive.

And despite the more pressing fact that "his surgically precise songwriting and the healing power of his gift for melody" is perhaps the worst sentence anyone has ever written about music, ever, in the history of ink and noise.

It is such an awful sentence that local police went round to check on the writer, James Sullivan, assuming that the words had been arranged as some sort of desperate cry for help. "It appeared at first" explained Sheriff Madeupski, "that Mr Sullivan was being held against his will and being forced to write about Mr Costello's honorary degree from a Boston school, and tried to signal this through his opening words. Upon investigation, though, it was discovered that he was merely being menaced by a tight deadline and a news story that had no real interest beyond a few alumni of the New England Conservatory."

Thom Yorke challenged over consistency

Thom Yorke, as we all know, despises Spotify. Not quite enough to pull Radiohead music from the service, but certainly enough to keep his less-lucrative side projects away from it.

Writing on Hypebot, though, Eliot Van Buskirk points out an even odder inconsistency in Yorke's position:

Do you know which on-demand services pays less than Spotify per stream, and doesn’t even include a premium version for people who might be willing to pay (although there have been weird rumblings about that)?

YouTube. And Thom Yorke’s Atoms for Peace music is all over that on-demand music service, including in the above video, which includes the entire Atoms For Peace album. XL Recordings, Atoms for Peace’s label, has official versions up there as well.

The last time we ran the calculations, the musical force of nature Psy (remember him?) made about a third of a cent per view from his monetized music on YouTube.
[...]
one recent estimate put Spotify payouts to one artist at .4 cents per song.

In other words, regardless of who owns it, Spotify pays out more than YouTube. The two numbers are closer than one might imagine, considering that over six million people pay for Spotify, and nobody pays for YouTube, but there they are.

Curious.

Michael Jackson: the never-ending battle for his money goes on

The latest person to pitch up to the Jackson estate, writ in hand, is Quincy 'you would have hoped that he was above this sort of thing' Jones, who reckons he's being diddled out of his due:

He says the singer's estate and Sony Music Entertainment improperly re-edited songs to deprive him of royalties and production fees.

Mr Jones says they also broke an agreement giving him the right to remix master recordings for albums released after Jackson's death in 2009.

The Jackson estate are trying to wave it away:

"To the best of its knowledge, Mr Jones has been appropriately compensated over approximately 35 years for his work with Michael," a statement said.

Interesting gambit. "He's been earning money for the work he actually did over three and a half decades; now it's time for us to earn money from something we weren't even involved in for the next four", in short.

Jones is looking for six million quid, or thereabouts. No lawyers at all could be reached for comment, as they were all out shopping for speedboats and gold-encrusted everythings.

Macca chats to Lennon

Apparently Paul McCartney tries to talk to John Lennon when writing new songs. Which is more than he tried to do when John Lennon was alive, so that's the healing started, then.

"If I'm at a point where I go, 'I'm not sure about this,' I'll throw it across the room to John," he says. "He'll say, 'You can't go there, man.' And I'll say, 'You're quite right. How about this?' 'Yeah, that's better.' We'll have a conversation. I don't want to lose that."

It's possibly true. You could imagine a ghostly Lennon nodding earnestly as Paul showed him, say, Dance Around, encouraging Macca to rush down to the studio and record the thing.

And then turning and laughing his spectral heart out at persuading Paul to chip further away at his reputation by pumping out more subpar twaddle.

On the other hand, maybe McCartney's head his post-1980 output, and is simply trying to blame Lennon for making him do it.

Noveltyobit: Manolo Escobar

Manolo Escobar - whose death has been announced - probably deserves to be known as something more than just the bloke who did Y Viva Espana.

To be honest, Y Viba Espana probably deserves to be remembered as something more than just a novelty hit. It's interesting how Escobar's obituaries just glide over how the song was released as Spain was shifting from fascist dictatorship to parliamentary monarchy. A song about letting your hair down and celebrating the joy of being on holiday might reek of cheap sangria and straw donkeys, but a joyous celebration of life lived lightly in a nation which was stepping out of decades of right-wing extremism and extra-judicial killings actually carried more meaning than that. It was novelty, certainly, but not just of the cheap holiday souvenir variety.


To remember just that one song, though (and in the UK, it's probably more recalled in the more tipsy cover version by Sylvia Vrethammar) neglects the rest of his fifty-year career, swapping between Andalusian copla, Spanish pop and a bit of acting as well.

Manolo Escobar was 82; he died Thursday after being ill with colon cancer for some time.

Who over

I know it's an era ending, but it's rather strange to see the NME describe The Who announcing that they'll wind up after their 50th anniversary tour as "quitting". Yeah, only doing a half-century. Fucking lightweight quitters.