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Hey guys,

It has been a long time since I posted. How long? Well the stock market was still a place you might want your money. Tina Fey was still most famous for her ‘day job’ on 30 Rock.

Also, that was before the launch of MTVmusic.com. I have lost major stretches of my waking life clicking around through the old clips on mtvmusic. Yeah, for the intertubes!

Other sections of the net still do some music video things better than mtvmusic. Youtube gets the latest Britney news out there. Onsmash still has the best collection of what is ‘new’ at least for urban music (and stony studio interviews). Right now mtvmusic is kind of a nostalgia machine (check the top viewed list for Buggles and Dire Straits) – but I assume that as the site develops it will get more ‘modern’ traffic.

I wish mtvmusic had a better ‘these are the newest clips we have added’ section. Even the main mtv site does that better. I wish that the ‘date added’ for the videos on mtvmusic was the date the video was released to MTV and not just the date some intern added the digital file to an mtv server. Didja know ZZ Top’s ‘Sharp Dressed Man’ was from 2007?

But these are minor quibbles. The picture quality on mtvmusic is great compared to the YouToogles. You can sort by director and see that two of the first three Isham-helmed clips are Metallica and the third is Nsync. They even have the alternate ‘pop-up’ versions of some clips.

Older videos never aired on MTV with director’s credits. Who knew, way back in 1988 that there even was such a thing as a music video director? Some of these classic clips have had the once unlisted credit included on mtvmusic. Others have not.

update: Check out the old-school opening slate on 'Billie Jean' - a hand-written label off the original tape box.

Obviously the site is not ‘done’ and more functionality and monetization (catchphrase alert!) is sure to come. The search function seems to work one day and then not the next, but that will get dialed in. It finally seems like MTV is in on the joke the internet is pulling.

This is change we can believe in.

Labels: Britney Spears, Isham, MTV, music video, NSync, video link, YouTube

The business side of the music industry has been getting heavy coverage the past few days. From Britney’s video adventures with the vertical brass cylinder, to Radiohead’s groundbreaking (groundbreaking, I say!) new strategy and Madonna’s new school all-in-one deal with Live Nation. There has been plenty of hype, but …

The Britney thing? Next.

Radiohead and Madonna are intriguing because these are about new ways of music getting distributed and money being made off the music, tours and celebrity fragrances. The self produced digital-only record is definitely the direction of DIY music careers and I also think that (at least on some level) Madonna and Live Nation (LN) represent the way that “labels” will look in the future.

I have no idea how these experiments are going to work and remember that no one else does either. No matter how many orders Radiohead got the first day or how sure someone is that Madonna took LN to the cleaners – these are massive, complicated deals that cannot be classified as successes or failures for years to come. What they are, for now, is a new direction – and that is exciting.

I am always one to be skeptical of hype, a side effect of being in the hype business. Both Radiohead and LN employed the power of the press release to perfection these last weeks. They got massive coverage for their new ventures, with very little outlay for newspaper or TV ads. Free press is great and there has been lots of it over the past few weeks.

That being said, we all need to take a chill pill. Remember the iPhone launch? That was madness. Surely the world was about to end. My favorite story from then was the Mayor of Philly getting caught camping out on line (what, no assistant?!?) to get a glorious world-changing cellular thing-a-ma-jig. Well, time has passed and many people have an iPhone, more don’t – the world continues to spin. The cell phone marketplace is different, but no one in that industry thinks it is all sorted out yet. That is where we are with the “game changing” Radiohead and Madonna deals, it is still very early.

These new ideas are intriguing but you know who they work for? Established megastars. Say again – established acts with massive pre-existing fame.

The Madonna deal is all about concerts and other merchandise – so that kind of thing could work great for Dave Matthews or the Eagles – not so much for Talib Kweli or Kelly Clarkson. The Radiohead model of self releasing (heh, heh – self releasing) on-line might work for Linkin Park, but probably not for a new act.

These strategies are a refreshing change from the tired label group-think, but they are (at least so far) strange new directions that don’t really apply to most of the music industry. Selling your own record on your website happens all the time already (though the “name your own price” part is kinda new) and by and large no one cares.

All kinds of acts you have never heard of are already doing things very similar to what Radiohead is trying with this. Thousands of bands sell their music for nearly nothing on-line 24/7 – so why is it a big story now? Not because the strategy is so new, but because a very, very famous band is doing it. This is actually not a story about a “bold new direction” for the record industry, it is a story about a beloved band and their music that everyone is eager to hear.

The Madonna signing with LN is similar – not all that new. The deal that 19 Management strikes with the American Idol finalists is similar (I believe) regarding the sharing of various income streams, though the dollar values are much, much lower for Ruben Studdard and Fantasia than they are for Madonna.

Radiohead and Madonna are doing something new-ish – but what happens with their experiments is largely meaningless for the real future of the record industry. Maybe if Madonna cleans up then John Mellencamp and Mary J Blige may want/get similar arrangements – but what happens when all the famous musicians are gone?

U2 and Usher could find audiences releasing their own “digital only” recordings – but even if it works perfectly, what does that mean to a new band no one has heard of?

Everyone that can truly benefit from these deals (at least in a way I can imagine in the present day marketplace) is already super-ultra-mega-famous. Only the most established and renowned artists need apply.

Telling a new band or a newbie singer that self-releasing and all-in-one manage-labels are the future – is like telling a poor family struggling on food stamps that they need to make money – by purchasing an apartment building. Buying a nice six-unit building IS a good investment – but you need to already have a big bundle of cash to even make it into that game. Your friend’s band who plays down at the corner bar/roller-rink/basement is probably struggling to afford a twelver of beer. The idea of owning rental properties as a “solution” is pure fantasy land for them.

These “new strategies” are great things to try, especially if you are already wealthy from the old strategies of the traditional record label. Without the backing of Capitol, can Radiohead get every major newspaper to write about their website? People are eager to hear Radiohead’s new music because Thom Yorke is very talented AND because their “old” label invested lots and lots of money to make that talent into fame. Capitol got rich too, far richer that the band ever did off Yorke’s songs – but ask Radiohead if they want to start again at zero without major label support.

Like people that remember V-J Day, the artists that were made super-stars by the old label powers will die out and slip into unimportance. Can these new business models make stars, or just profit off and enrich existing ones?

What happens when all the famous musicians are gone?

Labels: Britney Spears, celebrity, death, insider, label, Madonna, music video, Radiohead, u2

Hey, did you hear? There is a new Britney Spears video. It hasn’t been getting much press (well that and the Radiohead pick-a-price adventure) – so I thought I would let you know about it.

I do not want to get into piling onto Britney’s personal life or pointing out all the substandard elements of the clip. Anyone with eyes can see that. This is an actually decent pop song with a flat and effortless music video. Not much more needs to be said about the clip itself.

How and why this particular video got made does interest me, though. The director is listed as Jake Sarfaty. Some have said this is an Alan Smithee name for Jake Nava, a director who has worked with Britney before with some success.

The director of “Gimme More” is not the well known director of highly professional clips for Beyonce and Mariah. Jake Sarfaty is a real guy, a gaffer/grip with a reasonable amount of below-the-line credits on a variety of productions. So how does this guy end up directing a video for one the most (in)famous artists around? I certainly don’t know for sure – but my guess is that no one else would do it.

There had been talk for months and months about Britney making her OWN video. Jive didn’t want to pay (they thought the market wasn't ready for a "comeback") and yet Britney wanted to get out there right away and answer her critics. Is answering one's critics ever a good idea? How about answering the critics with a pole dance? That'll do the trick.

So this other, never produced, self-made Britney video was probably a different song, but I recall the story being that she wanted to shoot a clip where she was crucified on a cross made out of tabloids. Brilliant! This rumored video was supposed to get shot at Britney's own house and she reached out to some real directors – who came back with budgets and the like but it never took off. The story was that Britney was paying with her own money, so perhaps a professional was gonna cost too much or maybe someone talked sense into her and she decided to wait a bit on her “comeback.”

But finally, Britney gets the video she has been wanting to make - over the protestations of Jive it seems. There are soooo many mistakes with "Gimme More." Britney clearly needs some time off, both personally and in the marketplace. I don’t think people are ready to see her as an artist again, right now. She is still the “train wreck” in most people’s eyes and we are not ready to hear what she has to say musically. We are still more interested in whether or not she wears shoes into public restroom or gets her kids taken away by Sheriff’s Deputies. This is too soon, but it seems like Britney is not getting the best advice these days, or at least not listening to it.

Spending one’s own money is almost always a mistake. Anyone that casually watches Entourage must know this. It makes sense that Britney wouldn’t want to spend too much of her own money on a music video, so that is how a gaffer with zero directing credits gets the job.

The whole thing comes across so half-assed it is actually more like quarter-assed. It seems thrown together and almost completely unplanned. The song ain’t bad, but this isn’t gonna spark any kind of lasting comeback - despite the current surge of popularity on iTunes. Videostatic posits that we are watching for all the wrong reasons – and I have to agree.

The video for "Gimme More" doesn’t come across like a career move, but rather a desperate grab at keeping the mercurial flame of fame alive. All I can say is that Britney’s gonna need to find some more flammable stuff to throw in to keep it smoldering, because our attention is gonna burn through this balsa-wood thin distraction in way less than fifteen minutes.

Watch "Gimme More" on mtv.com.

Labels: Beyonce, Britney Spears, insider, mariah carey, MTV, music video, trainwreck, TRL