From: owner-support-system-digest@smoe.org (support-system-digest) To: support-system-digest@smoe.org Subject: support-system-digest V8 #44 Reply-To: support-system@smoe.org Sender: owner-support-system-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-support-system-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk support-system-digest Wednesday, May 11 2005 Volume 08 : Number 044 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [support-system] Girlysounds/Rarities ["Jeremy Rea" Subject: [support-system] Girlysounds/Rarities I have the bulk of the Liz Phair catalog (including the best versions of the Girlysounds I've heard) on Soulseek. Username is jibjibjib. jeremy ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 4 May 2005 23:52:14 -0700 From: "dana polachowski" Subject: [support-system] new liz and food for thought (discuss...) muchas gracias (hey, it's cinco de mayo, peeps) to ken for posting that link. no way was i gonna sit through one more round of radio-from-hell. that lasted precisely 10 seconds. yowza... as for liz's new batch, i think i've cracked the code: as long as that "idiot" jennifer lopez (go, pam anderson!)--or any rising starlet on the WB--keeps making movies, we have a winner. these are cut to order to slap into any feel-good chick flick in any stage of production in hollywood today, i swear to god. they're an editor's dream. (i should know, i just graduated with a degree in this stuff.) ok, ok, if i have to pick one, i like "giving it all to you." this girl has a real knack for the fast-car-with-the-top-down pop gem celebrating her love ("supernova" "what makes you happy"). she's really good at those, always has been. and it's the only one that's over 2 minutes long (more on that in a bit). "part of me" is kinda like this, too... but, overall, the whole lot is the kind of simple syrup that, i'm sorry, just makes me feel very alone in the world. ugh. i dunno, this stuff has the opposite e ffect on me. i feel like i'm voting for homecoming queen or something and all i want to do is let the snakes out in the biology lab and set the football field on fire. is it just me?? my inner "carrie" i guess.... so, yeah, are these finished? they're barely a minute and a half! some of 'em don't even have second verses (nevermind thirds).... what's up with that? good god, if you're outta ideas, get some of those poetry kitchen magnets and crack open the vino. boom, instant song. you can't go wrong.... anyhoo, here's an interesting article i found in USAToday about the music biz. i've been saying it for years: keep your eye on china!! ********************************************************** BEIJING Just picked up a CD by Yu Quan, a duo that is one of the hottest rock acts in China. Danceable. Very dramatic. As if Justin Timberlake had joined Journey and the band sang in Chinese. I bought the CD in a legitimate music store on one of the busiest corners in Beijing, a few blocks from Tiananmen Square. The CD came shrink-wrapped, complete with a slick insert of photos and lyrics, and cost the equivalent of $4. Yet despite the retail setting and packaging, the CD is most likely a pirated copy. The pirates are so good, hardly anyone can tell the difference. Yu Quan, like every music act in China, gets almost no income from CD sales, even though millions of its CDs have been sold. As soon as a CD is made, the pirates are on the street, offering them for a fraction of the retail price. Stores sell pirate copies. Legitimate CDs all but vanish. So artists have to regard CDs as essentially promotional tools, not as end products. Yu Quan makes money by performing concerts, getting endorsement deals and appearing in commercials. If people hear and like Yu Quan's songs on pirated CDs, at least they'll be more likely to come to the concerts and buy what the duo endorses. It's possible that this is the future of the global music industry. And even though that sounds dire for music and musicians, surprisingly it might not be. This all started to become clear with one comment. I was riding through Beijing in a car with Calvin Quek, a Beijing-based vice president of Silicon Valley venture-capital firm Global Catalyst Partners. Quek knows Chen Yufan and Hu Haiquan, the two guys who make up Yu Quan. We were listening to Quek's iPod, plugged into his car stereo. I asked Quek if there was an equivalent of iTunes a legitimate music download service that charges for music in China. With no hesitation, Quek answered: "No, and there never will be." Music pirating is so rampant and so entrenched in China that it's unlikely to ever be eradicated. Chinese consumers have come to believe that music is worth, at most, a few cents a song, and that copying and sharing music are totally acceptable. In all probability, no company will ever be able to sell $15 CDs or 99 cents-a-song downloads in the world's most populous nation. The International Federation of Phonographic Industry, which tracks music copyright issues worldwide, agrees. It figures 95% of music sales in China are of pirated copies. Instead of predicting that China will change as it engages with the global economy, the federation warns that China is, in fact, the leader. The federation's chairman, Jay Berman, has been quoted as saying, "The business model for the record industry worldwide is moving toward resembling what we see in China today." In the USA, free downloads of copyrighted music are driving the recording industry to sue teenagers and holler about the morality of obtaining songs for free. But if China is the future, that's all in vain. The genie is out of the bottle. Eventually, recorded music will no longer make money. That would be nice for consumers and really bad for record companies and retailers. But the biggest concern is that this will be terrible for artists. If artists can't earn money, economic logic says they might stop making music, which would be a major loss for society. But is that equation true? While visiting USA TODAY last week, Roger McGuinn, who led the Byrds in the 1960s, said he earned just 0.0007 cents on each early Byrds album sold. He adds that although Arista Records sold 500,000 of his solo album, Back From Rio, McGuinn never got a penny. In other words, thanks to the machinations of the recording industry, McGuinn has never made any real money on even his most popular recorded music. Yet he's done OK and now has a forward-thinking business model. He has a Web site, www.mcguinn.com, where he posts free songs. McGuinn made his most recent solo CD by recording it on his laptop and paying to have copies produced and packaged. He sells the CDs online and at concerts and says it's the first time he's ever made a profit on an album. The online music, the CD and a stalwart Byrds fan base all fuel interest in his live performances, which often sell out small venues. That's where he makes his money. McGuinn is apparently not lavishly rich, but he seems comfortable and is still making music. Yu Quan and most other Chinese pop artists similarly find ways to make money other than through selling CDs. A lot of it comes from sponsorship. Clothing, shampoo and computer brands pay to advertise at a concert. A bottled-water company put singer Wang Lee Hom on its products. Chinese rock stars aren't getting as wealthy as, say, Michael Jackson, but Quek raises an interesting question: Why should they? Only a relatively few American rockers ever sell enough CDs to get fabulously rich. Should society care if rockers can't afford to build their own backyard amusement parks? The vast majority of music artists bob along in the middle. They don't sell enough CDs to earn out their advances. They earn a living on the road and maybe from publishing royalties if they write songs. Such artists would benefit if the industry shifted to a model that includes more and more innovative ways for artists to make money. In that sense, the Chinese and/or McGuinn model could help artists. Thankfully, not everything about the Chinese music business is likely to come true in the USA. All of Yu Quan's songs are apparently about love. Actually, just about all Chinese rock music is about love, because government lyric sensors won't let artists write about much else. If that were true in America, McGuinn would've done jail time for co-writing the Byrds' satirical I Wanna Grow Up to Be a Politician. Bob Dylan would no doubt be serving a life sentence. Let's hope that the new business models can keep those and other creative voices making music. ************************************************************************************ i might be in NYC at the end of the month--yay! dp ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 8 May 2005 12:09:59 -0700 (PDT) From: "surrender16@yahoo.com" Subject: [support-system] old but free Liz memorabilia Got a bunch of old magazines, etc. that probably deserve a better home than the recycling bin. Lemme know if you are interested in any or all of this. If you are in the NYC area, we can probably arrange a pickup. If you want it shipped, you can have it for the price of postage. - -drew Music Choice (nov 1998) liz cover "rock's other new mommy tells us a secret" Performing Songwriter (nov 1998) liz cover Illinois Entertainer (oct 1998) liz cover "out of exile" INsite (oct 1998) liz/rebecca gayheart/robin williams cover light creases Details (feb 1998) bridget fonda cover, liz phair article Rolling Stone (oct 1994) liz cover "a rock & roll star is born" whipsmart postcard two (2) whitechocolatespaceegg promo stickers pink-colored flyers for a liz concert in Houston Nov 19, 1998 (show was cancelled) assorted liz buttons purchased on Ebay a long time ago probably handmade with a button machine - -- ------------------------------ End of support-system-digest V8 #44 ***********************************