Animal Collective's Fall Plans

Animal Collective is releasing a reissue of their 2003 album Campfire Songs, under their own label, Paw Tracks in January, but currently all eyes are on this Amazon page which has an $11.38 pre-order price for something called Fall Be Kind, due on Domino 12/8. We've already had a Crack Box, so just maybe this is the new Animal Collective record everyone has been waiting for.

That's still not all, though. They are also working on an experimental film that is supposedly almost ready. In a recent interview with Sterogum, they discussed their plans for the movie, including possible hybrid performance/screenings ... and the Sundance Film Festival.

I think the album listing on Amazon along with the experimental film goes incredibly well with Animal Collective's already mysterious and eclectic image. The fans love that they are different than anything out right now and these new projects are of indirectly being marketed perfectly towards them by not being marketed at all. Only the die-hard fans will discover the mysterious album on Amazon, and that seems to be what they want. It will create a buzz in the Animal Collective world, but it will also keep them under the mainstream radar, which I believe is exactly what they want. The experimental film that they are creating only reinforces my point.

-Woody Ellis

Guns N' Roses Learning The Hard Way...

Last Friday, October 2nd a lawsuit was filed against Guns N’ Roses for $1 million in damages. Apparently, two independent record labels, British label Independiente and the U.S. arm of Domino Recording Company, are claiming that the band used portions of two songs by a German musician. Oddly enough, these two record labels own the licensing rights to songs by German electronic musician, Ulrich Schnauss.
Axl Rose, Guns N' Roses band members, and album producers copied portions of two of Schnauss' songs for a song used on the band's last album called "Riad N' the Bedouins.

This applies to what we are learning because not only did Guns N’ Rose effect the sales and product of Ulrich Schauss music but they benefited from false collecting fees. Which I am guessing was not worth $1 million. Also, I will be interesting to see how there demographic of fans will change, after they hear that song was all a deception of someone elses talent.

http://www.billboard.com/#/news/guns-n-roses-sued-for-copying-songs-1004018829.story

~Rachel August Millas

Join Mailing List for a FREE song

Folk band The Low Anthem is giving away their cover of Bob Dylan's "Diginity" for those who sign up for their mailing list. This is a great way for the band to increase their subscribers and pay their already established [and potential] fans with free music. The song choice is also suitable for their market, as Bob Dylan is also a folk artist.

This is another example of giving away free music to benefit a band/artist, label, company, etc. It is a double win situation for both the fans and the business. Fans get free music out of the deal, and in return, the business receives their information to send out news regularly pertaining to their band(s)/artist(s).

The Band wrote:

"Dear friends, dear web surfers, if you would like to be on the cutting edge, and I mean reallyplugged in to the what's hip hopping in the now, join our mailing list. It costs nothing, it doesn't pester you unreasonably, and it's generally a bastian of witicism and rock solid, trustworthy information. We've worked hard to earn your trust over the years. That's why our mailing list has earned rave four star reviews from major publications such as "Horse and Hound" and "Modern Tubist." TheSchmaltzWithinYou.com calls our web-blasts "sincere and informative." And heres the deal breaker. When you sign up now, you will receive freely our cover of Bob Dylan's "Dignity," which we recorded at Studio Le Roy in Amsterdam, NL. All that value! What are you waiting for?"


~Laurel Zevitz

Article

Coke and Live Nation

Coca-Cola has entered into a multiyear marketing and sponsorship alliance with Live Nation, the world's largest concert promoter. Not only will Coke be sold in 76 of Live Nation's 84 venues, they will also be able to tap into the music industry further. Coke will connect with fans and individual artists. The deal opens many doors for Coca-Cola to cross market it's products. I think Coke is brilliant in this aspect. They will not only be the only brand sold at huge venues, but they will also be able to market their product with artists familiar to the general public. Not that we all don't know what Coke is already, but it will be cool to purchase the product and to be rewarded some way with music, whether it be free tickers or merchandise.

"Every single Coke brand makes sense for some kind of music," Wallach said. "Our goal is to develop marketing programs across everybody that Coke touches."

http://www.brandweek.com/bw/content_display/news-and-features/direct/e3i03c5991d65201a60bee5bc7ce5e8e12d

- Val South

Grizzly Bear Goes Classical

These days, it’s in a band’s best interest to explore alternative avenues of revenue as well as expand their fan base. Grizzly Bear, a Brooklyn-based indie band, has decided to do something that will do both of these things. In February of this year, they played a live concert backed by the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra at the Brooklyn Academy of Music to promote their latest album “Veckatimest”. This was their second concert to include an orchestra, their first being in March of 2008 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. Live performance has become a more important source of revenue than record sales and doing a show with a live orchestra can spark a lot of interest. Grizzly Bear has a third live orchestra performance scheduled for the third of October at Barbican Hall with the London Symphony Orchestra.
The aim of Grizzly Bear’s first orchestral show was to “break boundaries between genres and generations” (http://blogs.laweekly.com/westcoastsound/news/grizzly-bear-teams-with-the-lo/). This kind of show speaks to not only indie/alternative rock fans, but classical music fans as well. I think bringing together two different genres like this creates a very unique experience that people will be willing to pay more money for. It gets the indie rock kids out of the small, dirty venues and into these huge concert halls with beautiful architecture and amazing acoustics and it gives the classical folks a contemporary edge. I think that this kind of concert is a great way to create a hype and broaden their fan base, which in turn, will create more revenue flow. It also gets people to explore new genres of music and expand their horizons with is a kind of mindset that can lead to enrichment in arts as a whole.
Grizzly Bear isn’t the only indie band with this idea. Spiritualized is playing similar shows with an orchestra and choir scheduled for December in Manchester. And, this isn’t the first time something like this has been done. One of the first performances that combined a rock band played with an orchestra was in 1969 when Deep Purple performed with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Man, that would’ve been cool.
Here’s a neat article where Grizzly Bear talks a little bit about the topic: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/f787a046-9e61-11de-b0aa-00144feabdc0.html

By: Erin Schwaba

An Entire Catalog For Free!

Mojo Nixon will release a new album of unreleased songs on October 7th. He has decided to take a page out of Radiohead's book and release the album for free, but he will be taking it a few extra steps. He will also offer his entire back catalog for free. This deal will be going on only for three weeks and will be done exclusively through Amazon.
I cannot find the exact terms of the agreement with Amazon. I do not know if Mojo is receiving anything for this. I'm all for an artist making a dramatic move to get themselves noticed but offering an entire catalog for free seems a bit absurd to me. It could be that he is "retired" from music now and no longer depends on music sales for income. I see this most likely being an isolated incident and not too many artists will follow in Mojo's footsteps.
The article can be found here: http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2009/10/interview-mojo-nixon-sets-his-music-free.html#more
Steve Smith

Stats Prove MySpace to be

I came upon an article about MySpace's august stats. According to these stats, MySpace Music happens to be the number 1 site for time spent in the 18-34 demographic. MySpace Music users have grown 169 percent since its launch and 1472 percent year over year, which proves to be a very promise marketing ground. "Twelve to seventeen year olds are 2.3 times more likely than the average net user to visit MySpace Music." This right here show an impressive targeted audience for music marketing. The site is also number 2 in total unique users and has 18.95 million monthly unique users. With this kind of traffic one would have to be stupid to not come up with new artist promotion for MySpace Music. MySpace Music also expanded into Australia and New Zealand this week, which means marketing with MySpace is going global. "Australia has always been major music market for MySpace. The local site has hosted 40 free Secret Shows acts including Air, The Cure, Hilltop Hoods and Duffy. New Zealand too has had Secret Shows with Fall Out Boy and Evermore." Reaching more markets then before and obtaining new users daily, MySpace proves to be a marketing haven with many possibilities.

By: Andre Rodriguez