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MILLIONS NEEDED TO MAKE IT ON MYSPACE

By David James

Few industries are facing challenges as severe as the music industry. The business of selling CDs is unmistakably in decline. The lead singer of the Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger, recently commented that recorded music was only profitable in a period between 1970 and 1997. Yet music itself is thriving. The number of people listening, and the time spent listening, has never been greater.

The effect of these contradictions can be seen in the fate of the major record companies. Once they were able to control the production, distribution and media exposure of popular music. Artists were left to pick up the scraps, drawn into unequal partnerships that ensured that only the extremely successful thrived. Now, the remaining four majors are struggling to survive.

In theory at least, such mayhem is creating opportunities for entrepreneurs who are able to find new ways to access markets, often by providing a service rather than a product. Stuart MacQueen and Gregg Donovan, joint managing directors of Wonderlick Entertainment are an example of one endeavour built on a new way of thinking about the music business.

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REVIEW

Sapphires Is a Gem

The Sapphires tells the story of the McCrae sisters - four Aboriginal singers from country Victoria whose dream was to become as famous as their Motown idols. Based on the true story of writer Tony Brigg’s mother and aunties who entertained the troops in Vietnam, the Sapphires is a feel-good musical for anyone who loves the music of the sixties.

On the night of my review, the original ‘Sapphires’ were in the audience to see the play which dramatizes their journey from St Kilda to a war zone in 1969.

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REVIEW

STREET WARRIORS – MASTERS OF HAPPY HIP HOP

Despite being respected pioneers of Indigenous hip hop, Newcastle brothers Abie and Warwick Wright (aka Predator and Wok) have only just released their long awaited debut album.

Like most of their followers, the Street Warriors first came to my attention during a live performance. If you’ve ever had the pleasure of seeing one of their gigs you will have noticed a distinct lack of testosterone and genital grabbing and been surprised to discover that some hip hoppers at least can smile and look like they enjoy being on stage.

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JOHN PAUL YOUNG SHARING THE LOVE

By Megan Albany

2009 Hall of Fame inductee, John Paul Young, has given his audiences a lot of love but this September he will be honoured with the Excellence in Community Support Award for his work off stage. But before you go getting all warm and fuzzy about the old rocker best known for performing Vanda and Young’s mega-hit Love Is In the Air, journalists beware. The problem with old rockers is they no longer care what you think, as I found out when I recently interviewed him for The Dues.

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ON A LAST NAME ONLY BASIS

After winning the Indigenous category at the recent Q Song Awards, Busby Marou say they are now contemplating giving up their day jobs. But like all band success stories, their star hasn’t risen through one ‘big break’, but rather is the culmination of years of hard work plugging away at their craft. The Dues caught up with Thomas Busby to find out what the fuss is about.

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Send us your email, notes, memos, random thoughts, trenchant complaints. Tell us about your adventures, strugggles, disasters, disappointments and successes as a musician.

We give preference to letters of 200 words or less, but try your luck anyway. We may edit your letters for reasons of space, or possibly because we're just a bunch of interfering bastards. Despite that, we welcome your feedback, comments and observations. You can use a pseudonym if you wish, but please include your real name, suburb/town and, if you are writing from outside Victoria, your state/country.

Email us at musosunion@aol.com.

Got a problem or question relating to the music biz? Ask Uncle Terry.
(Uncle Terry is a grumpy old man who lives in a cave in one of the less fashionable corners of the Yarra Valley. He is not a qualified legal practitioner and he does not dispense formal legal advice. Neither he nor the publishers of "The Dues" accept any liability for the results of acting on the opinions, statements or recommendations expressed in his column)

Email Uncle Terry on musosunion@aol.com. Please provide your name and suburb (& state/country, if you're not a Victorian yokel...)

Dear Uncle Terry,

We are looking at doing some recording and have been put in touch with a Producer who might want to work with us. What sort of percentage should the producer get?

Aaron

Dear Aaron,

The term, producer, is bandied around so loosely these days that it could mean anything or nothing! The assistance producers claim that they can provide seems to boil down to two things:
1. They can help you musically or technically to get a better recording. OR 2. They have contacts which can help you advance your position in the music industry.
I strongly suggest that you very, very carefully examine the credentials of any person claiming to be a producer before agreeing to engage them on any terms.

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The Combi Descending

Chapter The Second: In Which Precociousness Is Viewed from the Perspective of the Precocious and the Same Is Lamented by His Mother

Canute Pendelbury waved before his eyes the smallest hands of an evil genius in the inhabited universe; they were pink and chubby and they were his, being attached via the natural means of having grown there at the ends of his arms; their sole singular feature being that they were three.

“I can pick and choose,” Canute congratulated himself, as his left, left thumb made its way to his mouth, his right, left pinkie glided towards his nose, and his right, index lodged in his right ear. Having arranged his digits and limbs thus, he settled down for his 90-minute afternoon meditation, in which on this day he aspired to solving some of the mathematical anomalies that had been left hanging from his previous day’s meditation on quantum distributions of dark matter through multidimensional space-time; these were the 90 minutes that that woman Eva called his afternoon nap.

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The election or shemozzle thereof, got me thinking that running a band is more than a little like running a country. There’s the egos, the need to win the popular vote both among band members and audiences, the speeches (or patter as we in the industry like to call it), the need to make your band look bigger and better than it is, the performing, the hierarchies and of course the all important band name.

Now personally I think that’s where our politicians have fallen down. I can’t imagine thousands of people trekking down to their local venue to see bands called Labour, Liberal or the Nationals. While The Greens might get a few more hippies along than the other parties it could still do with a bit of a PR makeover exercise if it really wants to draw in the punters.

So I’d love to hear your thoughts on alternative names for our parties. I think any of them would fare better being called simply, Party People, but perhaps they need something a little more specific.

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Disclaimer:
Articles express the opinion of authors and not necessarily that of theMusicians Union of Australia. No responsibility is accepted for unsolicited material. The Dues makes every effort to use reliable, comprehensive information, but we make no representation that it is accurate or complete.

Payola: The friend that doesn’t go away

US Broadcaster Univision is the latest company to pay big bucks to settle payola allegations by regulator FCC. The price? $1 million (and that’s $US). Univision also agreed to ban employees exchanging airplay for cash (isn’t that already banned?).

They claim:
1. It used to happen but doesn’t anymore
2. It was some employees in our record label which we don’t own anymore
3. No one else had any knowledge of the goings on.

OK… so why pay the mill? Sounds like the ‘it was two big boys but they ran away’ defence.

...more Intelligence

Part 17 of a series 

by
Bellaire Hillock

Last time we examined the internet, much of that instalment was about what it wasn’t and what it couldn’t do. You may remember, we discussed the misleading notion that the internet was like traditional broadcast media and the fact that a website does not promote itself. Now let’s look at what it is and what it can do.

One thing the internet does really well is it allows you to put a whole lot of information where lots of people can go and look at it (and listen to it as well). We’ll call this – hanging stuff up.

The other thing the internet can do very inexpensively, quickly and efficiently is send stuff – in fact it can send anything that can be reduced to computer data. This includes text, pictures, sound and moving images (but not furniture which is why many commercial websites are more like old fashioned mail order catalogues as described in the last instalment). What’s more the internet can send stuff to anyone on the planet with a computer and an internet connection and… they can all send you stuff too! We’ll call this (not surprisingly!) - sending stuff.

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HARMONY FOR THE COMPLEAT IDIOT
Part 20 in a series 

by
Holden Fairlane

Hi again Harmonicistic enthusiasts!! Here we go again.

For the last couple of installments we have been wandering around in the complex land of “Extended Dominants” and “WYSIWYG”. Now it’s time to regroup, recap and clarify (try doing that while you’re standing on one leg!). First let’s back to Chord Families (which is what we were talking about before we became distracted!).

Chord Families we have met

We have encountered three chord families so far:

Tonic Major
Dominant
Tonic Minor

Who’s in the family?

How do we know which chords are in each of these families? Well, there are some simple indicators:

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