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So, what has been going on? Any news in the music video world. New Radiohead music, new Britney video ...

Oh yeah – the DefJam/Rihanna/LaChapelle battle over the provenance of the Melina directed video for ‘S&M’.

As stated over on VideoStatic, the specifics around what is and what isn’t stealing/copying/whatever is kind of well-trod ground and I don’t want to go over anything frame by frame except my new BluRay of ‘Hobo Porn 17: Dumpsters of Glory.’

We have all seen discussions like this before, like when Filter took a page from Crewdson and Lady Gaga has made a career out of doing the same to performance artist Leigh Bowery. Even LaChapelle himself has been on the other side of the issue with his J-Lo ‘Flashdance’ clip. What is NOT mentioned in this NYT piece is if LaChapelle and the label got permission before or after they started down Adrian Lyne's road. As I recall, the label decided to get (pay for?) studio approval only after the video was completed and once they realized they might be open to a suit just like this one.

One way that Lopez's “I’m Glad” clip is like Rihanna’s “S&M” video is that I doubt either idea originated with the director. I would imagine that the artist or manager or label already had aping LaChapelle in mind before they ever contacted a single director. To back that up, on antville kalstark references a cryptic Joseph Kahn tweet that seems to be (but isn’t necessarily) about this Rihanna video:

Turned down a vid cuz they wanted "visual references." That vid ended up complete steal of a photographer's work. Yikes.

I imagine Island Def Jam was pushing to get a LaChapelle-ian look. The track is called ‘S&M’ fer criisakes – and that is an area the photographer has explored extensively. Also, LaChapelle uses bright colors and a pop sensibility – things that would certainly lessen the scary vibe that might have been there if the lyrics of the song had simply been acted out in a video. Labels often adjust the message or intensity of a song with the visuals and since LaChapelle made bondage 'fun' in his photos, he’s a perfect reference point for this video.

So why not just hire LaChapelle for this Rihanna job? Directors at the level of LaChapelle don’t ‘need’ a music video job and I can’t imagine he’d want to go back to cover similar ground to those photos – many of which are years and years old. Tarantino doesn’t want to make Pulp Fiction 2 either. Perhaps LaChapelle might have been convinced to direct a video for 'S&M' but it would be something new and the artist’s people wanted the candy-colored sexual danger they had seen before – in their existing reference photos.

This whole thing has not yet made the ‘news’ section on LaChapelle’s website.

Also there is the small matter of money. LaChapelle's budgets are way, way higher than what Melina got to spend. The lawsuit references a 'million dollar fee' for music videos that LaChapelle has received in the past. I imagine that was the overall budget and not the director’s fee and the inflated number in the suit is a mistake or strategic to up the possible settlement amount. Also, the industry has changed a bit.

I am not a lawyer (I occasionally do play one on TV), but lawsuits like this hinge on damages. Real world, monetary damages. The fact that the Rihanna video is quite a bit like LaChapelle’s work and that hurt someone’s feelings is irrelevant to the legal system. Twitter and comments are all about who copied who and why that is so bad, and so on and so forth. However, proving damages (like, say, a million dollar fee that was lost) is the language of judges and lawsuits.

And here it gets to the interesting part, at least to me. Everyone reading this has submitted (or had submitted to them. Hi, label folks!) treatments with other people’s photographs attached. Sometimes they are stock images we haven’t paid for. Maybe they are location photos. Perhaps they were even photos taken by a famous fashion photographer and torn from Italian Vogue. The photos with this very post are culled from the internet. Hell, if the lawyers for Black Dog and IDJ are smart, they’ve already asked to see a gang of LaChapelle’s old treatments to show how common this practice is.

So we all have used reference images, but at the same time we are all SHOCKED that this Rihanna video looks like some fashion photos. Why?

Well, either because of label notes or directorial inertia – the final video looks a TON like the exact photos. The walls are the same pink. The female model is shot from the same profile. It looks like every effort was made to make as exact a copy as possible. In that way, this is ‘worse’ than most of the typical 'X is biting Y' discussions. But that also feels like an over-reaction. How was LaChapelle damaged – he wouldn’t be able to do the job for the budget they had, so maybe he shouldn’t care. At the same time, it would suck to feel ripped off, as LaChapelle must.

So there we are – I have no concrete conclusion about LaChapelle v Fenty et al. But this whole thing DID make me think of this awesome post by Devin Faraci over at Bad Ass Digest.

Faraci writes about that now-infamous Cooks Source thing where the editor copied a blogger’s recipe and then excoriated her for asking to be credited. The internet went NUTS over this theft and the rude reply – at least when they weren’t busy bit-torrenting songs online. Read the whole thing, Faraci makes some good points

Be outraged at what Cooks Source did here, but answer the question: how is this all that different from you stealing a movie online?

That is a very good question.

The internet is a place for Congressmen to troll Craigslist for strange, facebooking and downloading things you are too cheap to pay for. Studies have estimated that more than 50% of all internet bandwidth is absorbed by people illegally downloading songs or movies or porn (that they inexplicably want to save permanently on their hard drive for their significant others to find). That kind of stealing is much more of a real world threat to me (and probably you) than the Cooks Source thing or even this Rihanna-LaChapelle issue. But we creative types seem to get much, much more worked up about this kind of 'what is creativity' thing than people outright stealing the actual product.

I've been on about this topic for a while, but the best thing I've read is Faraci's headline, and it applies to this S&M issue perfectly:

The Internet Finally Finds A Kind of Copyright Infringement It Doesn’t Like

Labels: insider, label, music video, on the set, philosophy, selling, video link

Remember me?

Last week, Videostatic tweeted about this article in Newsweek – referencing how music videos are back. Back I say!!

I had missed the article for two reasons. One, I was unaware that Newsweek was still a going concern (I’m also weirded out by the new, TV Guide shape of Rolling Stone, so let’s say I have ‘issues’). Two, I can barely read.

The piece, by Ramin Setoodeh, makes some quality points. It even captured that brief sliver of time when Gaga was still ahead of Der Bieber.

The reason music videos have come back from the dead is simple. They are the perfect length—three to five minutes—for abbreviated online attention spans. They are easy to share, tweet, Facebook, and comment on. You can watch them from the comfort of your own home (or cubicle, when you’re procrastinating at work).

One thing I will add is that Setoodeh gives a decent amount of credit for the ‘revival’ of music videos to YouToogle. He also blames the standard villain for knocking MVs off of MTV – the reality show. Now I agree that once MTV realized the profits available with the Osbournes and the Sweet Sixteeners (let alone The Situation) videos were doomed on Viacom owned airwaves. But there was one villain (and I am using that word sarcastically, no one or no network ‘owes’ music videos airtime) left out of the piece – YouTube itself!

Once YouToogle unified all the disparate places people watched videos – the jig was up for MTV. Maybe the younger types don’t remember the earlier days of the web when finding videos online was almost impossible. During this era, the MTV.com site never really worked if you had a Mac. Hard to believe, but true. Assuming that this current ‘truth’ is not one of those interlocking dreams that I am waiting Juno to wake me up out of. Anyway, I digress …

Youtube came in and simplified the way we watch web videos. Search in one spot and pretty much every clip will available, and it will actually play. No more codecs or Windows Media blah-de-blahs to download. Youtube fixed all that and thus became THE place for videos on the web. Thus, YT (which always makes me think of Y&T – but that is another story for a more summah time) became the dominant place to watch videos and thus –

MTV stopped running them. Once any music video I want is available, ANY time I want it on the Internet – why do I watch a block of clips on MTV? The answer is: I don’t. If you’re a fan of My Chemical Romance, you don’t watch clips for Drake, drumming your fingers on your step-mom’s coffee table – you click on your computing device (hint: it’s disguised as a phone) and watch the desired MCR music video immediately.

When I was younger it made sense to sit through Pointer Sister videos to see the hoochie girls in short skirts get out of the car in that ZZTop video. There was no other way to see scantily clad women, or, for that matter ZZTop videos.

But in 2010, the internet does a great job of chopping our media consumption into smaller and smaller niches. If I want to read internet postings just from fans of MCR – I can do that. I can wall myself off in a narrow alley packed just with ideas I have heard a million times before (Hiya, Fox News). Or I can explore new artists and videos based on suggestions from my friends, or just based on what catches my Ritalin tempered attention span. That is how people see new videos now, and the benefit is that as soon as the song or the video starts to bore me - I can click away to something else. Under no circumstances am I going to sit in front of a television, watch through a whole video of an artist I don’t like, in the hopes that the next clip (that I also didn't choose myself) will just happen to be something I like. That channel has been changed long, long ago.

YouTube may now be ‘saving’ videos (If you consider $40k budgets for established pop acts to be ‘salvation’) – but first YouTube did a hell of a job kicking music videos in the nuts and ending video blocks on the biggest outlet, MTV. So for that, YouToogle, I say, umm, ‘thanks?’

Read the whole Newsweek article - here.

Labels: insider, MTV, music video, My Chemical Romance, philosophy, selling, TRL, video link, videostatic, YouTube

At the LA Auto Show, the prominent color this year was green. Hybrids, Variable Displacement, Fuel Cells and all things gas-saving were in the spotlight. Even the Porsche SUV, the Cayenne, had a partially electric version on display (though still a plan rather than a buy-able product). Cadillac displayed a hybrid Escalade that had chrome “Hybrid” badges big enough to compete with the 22-inch rims. It seems like the bigger and more guzzle-riffic the vehicle, the harder the manufacturer was trying to convince us they had the interests of the planet in mind. The car companies even hired hot chicks with a natural make-up and natural chests to hand out brochures – a sign of the depth of their commitment to the new, green way of the world.

Everyone knows that hybrids are not the answer. Hybrids are the methadone to the problem, They are a good step, and much better for our health that the hard stuff, but as long as we love that rush/horsepower – we are still gonna be watching movies about sad penguins on shrinking ice and news reports about “national interests” in distant places where lots of dinosaurs and plants died millions of years ago.

So the car companies were posing like they had it all figured out. They licensed some power-train technology from Toyota, slapped it in their three-ton pick-ups and the problem is solved. Right?!?

The record industry in a similar state. Radiohead and digital downloads make news. The industry giants are touting new ways of doing business and acting like they have solved their problems, but they have not. In late 2007, anyone with a couple of hundred million dollars could place the “Buy It Now” bid for Warner Bros Records on Ebay and receive free-shipping on their very own music conglomerate. The problem is, anyone smart enough to have that kind of money is also smart enough to realize they are better off buying Enron stock.

There are lots of smart people in the music business, and they are doing the best they can but there are no quick fixes. There are smart people at GM, too – and right now the best they have is green stickers to put on the back of the enormous SUVs that were uber-profitable for them just three years ago.

One thing big companies do really well – is act like everything is okay. What else can they do? So right now, the colorful lights make the top of the Capitol Records Building look like a Christmas tree, just like when Sinatra was moving units. What else are they gonna do? Not put up the lights?

Hybrids or no hybrids, Detroit (and Tokyo, and Stuttgart) have solutions to find if they wanna still be having the LA Auto Show in 20 years.

If the Capitol Records Building gets bought up by the Chinese government (and painted with lead paint, of course), they can still hang the Christmas lights every December. It will be just as pretty and only the old timers will be grumbling that it doesn’t mean what it used to. Most people don’t give a shit what the old-timers grumble about.

The music industry needs to move past their current stage of acting like it is all good while they rearrange the deck chairs when no one is looking. A “hybrid” sticker on the CDs that don’t really sell isn’t fooling anyone. Right now, we are still at the stage where Sony/BMG having a myspace page or Universal being big on YouToogle comes off like a solution. Please submit all suggestions to the Capitol Building, ASAP.

Labels: death, insider, music video, selling, YouTube

The music industry has a long history of white people “borrowing” the coolest cultural elements from black Americans and using it to make money. I’m not even gonna get into all the examples, they are legion.

In Chris Rock’s 1996 stand-up special “Bring the Pain” he talked about how there weren’t any cool white people any more, just white people trying to act like they are black to be cool. I believe Rock's references then were Fred Durst and Kid Rock. Hard to argue with that logic. And shame was upon the white folks for their lack of creativity.

But now things have changed and the Vans are on the other foot. Cool Kids just released a new video with the title “Black Mags” – a reference to the magnesium rims on BMX bicycles. Hard to get whiter than BMX bikes. Maybe one of those rappers is named Earl.

All through hip hop there has been a recent surge in the combination of urban culture with X Games style. Early on there was Skateboard P and his own BMX-ing in “Lapdance” (NSFW link). Lupe Fiasco kicked and pushed and the Pack rapped about their love of Vans – Spicoli’s favorite shoes. I saw the expression “skurban” used on some talk show and I knew this phenomenon had picked up steam.

In the Cool Kids clip there is even a rapper wearing post-modern skate inspired nuthugger jeans. Damn! White folks MUST be cool again.

Side note - the Cool Kids clip seems to "borrow" a lot of elements from the Pack clip. Black and white photography, tight shots of various middle school girls mouthing the lyrics, etc.

What is the next element to be absorbed into the new urban landscape? How about surfing? Sounds impossible, but check out top-level pro surfer Bobby Martinez – he has all the tatts and gangsta bonafides, plus he is an amazing surfer. Martinez has a ghetto background more real and gritty than many rappers, so it seems like an obvious choice.

I can’t really predict what will be next, but for now “Hooray, white people are cool again!” (quick take photo, sure not to last).

Labels: music video, selling, video link, YouTube

Retirement is not permanent. Not in boxing. Not in entertainment – especially not in the rap game. Anyone who was surprised that Jay-Z released his “Kingdom Come” comeback CD after “quitting” to head up Def Jam, well, Kanye and Fiddy have a bridge they wanna sell you.

However, I was surprised to hear recently that Jay-Z has another album coming out – less than a year after his last one. I first heard the news, and I kind of groaned a little bit – we all know what can happen when a comeback is hurried into the marketplace before the audience is actually hungry for it.

I had heard nothing about this until a piece came out in the NYT about Jay-Z’s new record and its ties to the upcoming American Gangster macho Oscar bait from Ridley Scott. Apparently the whole album is “inspired” by the Russell Crowe – Denzel Washington scenery chew-fest.

“It immediately clicked with me,” said Jay-Z, who has made passing references to gangster movies in previous recordings but has never delved so deeply into the genre. “Like ‘Scarface,’ or any one of those films, you take the good out of it, and you can see it as an inspiring film.” – NYT

So far, none of this sounds good to me. It’s too soon, the album seems to be shackled to a film which makes it more of a marketing piece than inspired creation. And of course, Jigga’s last music was very underwhelming.

And I was also troubled by the over the top look of the videos for Kingdom Come. Sure Jay looked amazing selling Budweiser in that Monaco Tourism Board spot – but was that what we wanted from Hova? Most people passed on Kingdom Come, which made me question even more the motives for Jay’s quick come-back. All signs pointed to a bloated, ego-fueled disaster … then I saw ...

The clip for “Blue Magic” – all stripped back menace and desolate urban drug rhymes. This is Jay out coke-ing the Clipse – as raw and real a record as Jay has made in years (ever?). My fears went out the window – at least for this first song. This is the b/w intensity of “99 Problems” with the late-night, broken-glass beats that first got Pharrell noticed. Hell, Jay's not even in the damn vid.

The video has been added and pulled all over the web. Anyone who has a stable link should send it along to me. But you should def watch the video - my rambling will make more sense. Try onsmash or YouToogle.

Read the NYT interview and you can see that Jay seems really amped up by the movie that the album is inspired by. Jay has spent a few years being professionally non-plussed so that kind of fire seems like a good thing.

The clip – directed by Rik Cordero – feels like an episode of “The Wire” come to life with a million and one things sure to make MTV/BET nervous (but watch them still play it anyway – it is JAY after all). This video (or “trailer” ?!?) is all the things that “Show Me” was not – and that is a good thing.

Jay has been a lot of things, but he must have realized that “self-satisfied mogul" is not a persona that we are too interested in. Bigger is not necessarily better. This first track off American Gangster heads in a new direction and the video (assuming this is the “real” video for the track) is spot on perfect for the music.

All in all, “Blue Magic” seems like the perfect comeback video – and Jay (label prez and artist) didn’t have to pay a million bucks for it either.


Update - over on antville, spit posted this link to photos from Pharrell's blog. These images apparently show the "real" video shoot being directed by Hype. Sigh. My enthusiasm is waning as I see the glossy cars and flashing light sets. Who knows if this glossy stuff will be intercut with the b/w drug stuff or if this trailer is really just a teaser to up the street cred.

Labels: jay-z, label, music video, philosophy, review, selling, video link, YouTube

Not to start this down the road of the Mac/Win wars, the Sunni/Shia thing is bad enough – but Apple announced some new products and it started me thinking.

It seems that only ones really winning in the new music marketplace are at opposite ends of the (perceived) quality spectrum. On the “low” end is Koch Records – a record label that was once the 99-Cent Store of labels, but now seems to have a new hit every couple of weeks.

On the high-end is Apple and their own 99 centavo mercado – iTunes. They make a cut for every song (and video and ringtone) they sell – all without having to spend the kind of promo dollars that labels do. Would you rather pay for four (seven?) expensive videos for 50 Cent and then hope he beats out Kanye (and Kenny Chesney) for enough soundscans to pay back the dough spent up front or run a website that cranks out the same profit no matter if people buy a song on Sony or Warners?

Sure Apple pays a lot to advertise their iWorld. And they use music videos to do it. The Feist clip I like turns up on the ads to the new ChunkyNano. Watch the commercial and see that at the end there are links to buy the song and to buy the video. Anything that helps the artist sell music (at least via iTunes) is good for Apple. And all the things that don’t help the artist, are of no concern to Apple. The Cupertinians get much of the reward with none of the risk. Is it my imagination or does that seem to be Steve Job's God-like fingers pinching the whole music industry in that photo?

Apple has almost no challengers in the mobile music market. They seem to have a monopoly on the way music is played, Apple's desire for memory is THE thing that drives the computer chip market and other giants of commerce are teaming up to form a company (that will probably get its ass kicked) to try and get in on the business that Apple is dominating – just because the business is so damn profitable.

The new Apple devices will allow users to download songs directly to iPhones and TouchPods using wifi. Users will pay once for the song and then again for the ringtone of the same song. The videos on the glossy iPhone and iPod screens look better than they do on YouToogle – and the iPhone has its own YouTube which even looks better than the regular one. Seen through Mac-colored glasses the music industry (and video especially) looks pretty damn sunny. But that is just from the Steve Jobs POV.

As the music industry takes on water and tries to act like there aren’t pieces of iceberg all over the deck, Apple is still riding the wave of the one thing the music industry has in excess – cool. Music and music videos are cool. That used to make us rich. Now videos make Apple rich while the rest of us work hard to turn a profit creating videos and wonder why we didn’t buy more shares of Apple before the latest announcement.

Labels: media, music video, selling, YouTube

Sorry for the long delay between posts. Real life intrudes …

Anyway, the LA Times ran an article on Sunday about the growing trend of “indie” or “alt” artists getting their music placed in television commercials for the most surprising products. This once verboten avenue for money and exposure seems to be getting more well trod and respectable by the minute.

The article treats the issue of licensing music to commercial endeavors with an even-handed-ness not often seen in the mainstream media. It will probably surprise no one that reads this blog that I found some people’s response to the “dead punker” campaign from Doc Marten’s to be a bit hysterical:

"Tasteless!" ran a headline in TheDailySwarm.com, the website that broke the story. (The images were licensed for use in the UK through Corbis, the original photos' supplier, apparently without permission from the musicians' estates.) Cobain's widow, Courtney Love, lamented the "despicable use" of her husband's image. Fan outcry lighted up hundreds of blogs worldwide. And as a coda, executives at Dr. Martens apologized for the "offensive" ads and fired Saatchi & Saatchi, the agency responsible for them. - LA Times

The artists should be able to control their music and image and the fact that Kurt and Joey are getting pimped out post mortem – does strike me as a bit creepy. But if musicians wanna sign up for the Madison Avenue checks – more power to them. No one would mistake John Mellencamp or Mr. Zimmerman as patsies – but they seem to have no problem with the strategy.

Does anyone remember when Neil Young did a whole song and video about how he would never sell out to advertisers? That seems almost quaint today.

It is no shock that a staid advertiser like Cadillac would turn to formerly “threatening to the system” rock and roll like Led Zeppelin when their “old and prosperous” demographic starts to include the formerly dirty hippies that loved Zep back in the day and now want to get their clubs to the golf course in style. That Devo is reworking “Whip It” into “Swiff It” themselves seems (at least to me) incredibly subversive and funny.

The twist to me is that advertisers WANT edgy, odd and not necessarily all that well-know pop songs for their ads. The article has lots of good details and Chris Lee hits on the main reason that recordings artists are starting to be down for this kind of thing …

TV commercials give the kind of exposure that rock radio or music television can no longer deliver. That iPod commercial for Jet’s big hit certainly got the band a ton of attention which led to an even more lucrative appearance in a movie trailer that was seen many more times than the actual movie.

So a commercial can help a band’s career, by getting them out to a larger audience but the music can also generate money for a band. No duh, right? But the twist in 2007 is that bands, even REAL popular ones, might be struggling to make money any other way. Sure they can tour, but the once lucrative world of catalog CD sales has cratered unless you are one of the lucky bands selling albums entitled “Legend,” “Eagles Greatest Hits” or “Back in Black.”

What the decline in music sales (both new and catalog) has done is take the edge of pride off artists. What were the Stones gonna get for one of their songs in the 1980s? Probably a good amount, but they had plenty of money and more on the way. The bad press generated by licensing a song was not worth the (relatively) small payout. The hippy ethos of the 60s also loomed over the industry, making bands very nervous of being seen treating their music like a money-making career, even if that is exactly what it was.

Now in 2007, with labels not a reliable source of money, and the “bad press” much less bad – the upside surely outweighs the bad. Does licensing a song make you look like a sell out, or a smart businessman? Probably depends on if anyone actually wants your songs.

Labels: label, media, music video, selling, YouTube

HBO’s new comedy show “Flight of the Conchords” has obviously brought a lot of comparisons to Tenacious D. It is easy to understand why – two guys play guitars and sing funny songs while seemingly waaay too into it and believing they are (or are soon to be) massive rock stars. Jack Black and Kyle Gass have dreams of arena rock while the Conchordians imagine (or joke about imagining) a world where fey strummers are the coolest dudes around. Perhaps a decent metaphor of differing mindsets in the US and New Zealand, but anyway …

“Conchords” is a reasonably funny show with a very unscripted “post-comedy” feel for most of the episodes. But then comes the main event – the joke music videos. The show is not a parody of musicals where people suddenly break into song in the middle of their lives. There is plenty of that in the under-seen Top Secret where Val Kilmer cuts a rug and surfs with a 12-gauge.

What “Conchords” parodies so well is music videos. The two stars of the show don’t just break into song, they break into song with “edgy cool” camera moves and Caribbean-appropriate post effects. There is even a little Spike Jonze-ian Daft Punk action, all with charmingly low-fi budgets.

The parodies demonstrate just how welded into modern pop-culture MVs are. A few seconds into the music video sketches you can see what the Conchords guys are going for – even if they are not doing a specific famous video send-up (that is preserved for the genius of Indian Thriller). The Conchords perfectly capture the silliness of their (and our) favorite videos – turning the conventions of MTV into comedic punctuation for their slightly silly songs.

Music Videos are headed into a more and more fractured future where kids can delve deeper and deeper into their favorite sub-genres of music. The clips are sorted and arranged on the Inter-Tubes so that no music fan must be exposed to goth rock if he likes emo and saves the backpack rap fans from ever hearing or seeing R&B or drug-rap unless they choose to.

Conchords is obviously aimed at people old enough to recall MTV as a dominant and relatively omnivorous musical force and not just the pre-teen reality hoe-down it has become. As the conventions of music video are further and further Balkanized I wonder if only a few kids will be able to laugh at music video parodies because they won’t get the narrow-cast references. That and the parody videos will have the same production value as the “real” clips.

Labels: Flight of the Conchords, HBO, Indian Thriller, music video, selling, Spike Jonze, video link, viral video, YouTube

Into the pen

Following the herd is not a lot of fun. The view isn’t so hot and you usually step in much crap. Then, why do so many videos do exactly that, follow the herd?

The herd is eternal
Well, making videos that are largely the same as others in the marketplace is certainly not new. Many folks, me included, remember the past as the good ole days where everything was better than it is now. By and large this is the same BS instinct that makes every generation of parents crankily call their kids’ favorite songs “not music” and “just noise.”

Hollywood released some amazing movies in the 1970s and 1971 will be remembered as the year of The French Connection and A Clockwork Orange. But '71 was also the year for money making exploitation junk like Billy Jack, The Andromeda Strain, yet another Bond sequel, a Disney animated money machine and the year’s top grosser was a family musical called Fiddler on the Roof (which would certainly star Ben Stiller if it were to be made today). My point is that we tend to forget the turds of the past and only recall the things we see as cool or good. The same thing happens in music videos.

1983 was Thriller and the aggressively “odd-ball for such a straight-ish band” “Jeopardy” by Greg Kihn. Those were good videos, but there were also tons of cornball Quiet Riot and Michael Bolton clips that year as well. Music video directors have always followed the herd, and it is not really getting worse today. We usually remember the stand out stuff and forget all the filler. But most music video directing gigs are (have been/will be) just that, filler.

It seems to me, going forward, standing out will be harder (more clips in the on-line marketplace, no big label push to give any a head start) but at the same time more important. A great example is this wild Belarussian video that simply grabbed me and forced me to sing along in a foreign language about Snickers bars.

The labels WANT to follow the herd
It is much easier to market something when you have a road map. Watch how many studios green-light films that look like “300.” As I have discussed before, labels often use the video process to make final adjustments to the image of an artist, and they rarely steer the video away from what has been successful before. A director is free to come up with any concept he/she wants – but most of the working types know that if they ignore the notes for “an upbeat club concept that follows the lyrics” they probably will be home while someone else is shooting the job.

Generic music calls for generic videos
I have written on this before as well. Creating an odd-ball concept for a straight ahead artist is just as wrong (both commercially and creatively) as coming up with a typical performance clip for Bjork. If you don’t see the truth in that statement check out an earlier post I made on craftsmanship. If that doesn’t convince you, go back to commenting on all the video blogs about how every “v1deo suxxx.”

Money (or lack thereof) pushes videos into the herd
This is the one that has changed recently. As “big budget” videos have come to mean “anything over $200k” – it is harder to create something that stands out from the pack.

Some readers may be thinking that 200 large is a good amount of money – and it is. If you are used to working on videos with $8,000 budgets you may be shocked, but 200k is not that much. For big label/big artist jobs they usually have very specific demands like a certain “level” of DP, first class air travel for an alarming number of people besides the artist themselves. Plus there are the trailers. Always the trailers.

Two hundred grand is a one day shoot, in the quickly dying world of high dollar videos. You have to get real close to 300k to get a second day. And this is a simple job without too much post or location costs or stunts or dancers or art direction. The more things cost – the less control the director/producer has over things.

The label on the 200k job likely wants some specific things – 50% performance, nothing too dark or spooky, make the artist look happy and fun, etc. There will also probably be some product placement, which is where part of the 200k comes from. The label’s “requests” often get way more specific and include which choreographer or glam squad must be hired.

This is not to posit a “poor little rich director” scenario – it is to point out that the “big” budget of 200k is 1) mostly sucked up by extraneous stuff the director doesn’t necessarily want to spend it on and 2) comes with LOTS of restrictions and expectations from the label. It is the label’s money, they get to spend it however they want, but …

This is another thing that forces the finished videos into the herd. The label expectations and demands of doing a clip that is expected to sell records have always been there, but with the drop in budgets, it is even harder to make something unique.

If you have to shoot a one day job with daylight exteriors (not much money for lights or pricey locations) and the song is about hot women and hotter cars – you can see how this ends up lopping off the ends of the Bell Curve of creativity.

The best directors find a way to get the job done and add in their own creativity. Building a style has to be weighed against the real-world concerns of getting a coke addled R&B singer to come out of his trailer before his manager beats him up and making sure you have enough left on the budget for a, um, “gift” for the commissioner.

Labels: insider, music video, philosophy, selling

How evil is the RIAA?

Seriously, how baby-eatingly bad is the RIAA? Are they Hitler bad? Slobodan Milosevic evil? Maybe just Dr. Evil semi-evilish?

The RIAA has been under some serious heat from them there intranets of late. By enacting the strategy of suing anyone who doesn’t genuflect fast enough, the record industry is shooting themselves in their be-spatted foot. Yes, the RIAA is doing a whole lot of dumb things. Many, many stupid decisions are made by the Recording Institute Association of America. That being said …

They are not really wrong. The RIAA is actually right about the core issue. Stealing music is wrong. Yes, I know I just came out for tyranny and against sunshine.

I believe illegal downloading is bad. It is stealing. Taking something that is not yours is against the law and it should be. Recent changes in technology have made it very easy to grab up the music (and movies and software) you want online. But easy and right are not the same thing.

People that want free music will shake their fist at the RIAA and offer many excuses as to why it is/should be okay for them to steal music: CDs are too expensive, labels are the man (and the man is ALWAYS bad), the RIAA sucks, I don’t have enough money, the labels rip off the artist anyway, blah, blah ...

The basic thoughts behind the excuses might be true, but the core of it is that those are just excuses. Just listen to yourself.

It is not okay to steal other things that you find too pricey (jewelry, Ferraris, sushi). It is not okay to steal from places run by jerk wads. If you don’t have enough money for something, maybe you ought to readjust your priorities rather than stealing if you don’t wanna get in trouble. These excuses and justifications are all a bunch of noise. It is wrong to take stuff that doesn’t belong to you, and you know it. (Pardon my use of the second person, it just seemed to work better.)

People who steal music say all kinds of dumb stuff. “I download it first and THEN I buy it later if it is good.” Really? With a straight face, you’re gonna tell me that you had to download the entire Roxy Music Greatest Hits Collection to see if you liked it? What are the CDs you bought after downloading the songs first? What percentage of those “involuntary free samples” given out by the musicians and record labels turn into purchases by you?

There are millions of excuses and justifications and they might bring comfort as Limewire does it’s business and fills your hard-drive with music you love/like/sample – but the excuses are all bullshit. All us humans like stuff for free. And we will take that stuff as often as possible, especially if we have someone else to point at (RIAA) who is also behaving poorly so we can feel better about our own actions.

This blog, jefito, is pretty cool, but on this topic I think he is totally missing the point.

“The sad irony here, I think, is that file sharing probably won’t ever die. It’s just too easy, and appeals too deeply to our need to have common experiences.”

Common experiences? So THAT is why people download? Not for free stuff, but to share the communal e-campfire experience and talk story like our long lost ancestors? The bullshit in that statement is just as stinky (and in my opinion far more-so) than anything the RIAA tries to serve up as the truth.

Scott McCloud draws a cool on-line comic and he has a long post/drawing that explains the theory of micro-payments very well. I think micro-payments will drive on-line commerce, if not all commerce, in the future. Check out his piece, I thought it was great until …


He would pay twice the amount if he knew it was going to the band? Really?!? How Smurfy. Again, I call “bullshit” on that. This is simply not human nature. Downloading is rampant because people like free stuff. Period.

If the RIAA and all it’s dastardliness did not exist, would downloading stop? If CDs (or a comparable download) cost three dollars would internet users everywhere agree this was a fair price and simply pay for their music and not illegally download?

Every time someone makes lame excuses like this, it completely undermines any other salient points they might be making. Which destroys credibility faster? The RIAA’s stupidity and heavy-handed-ness or pretending that stealing songs with your computer is some kind of internet Kumbaya? That is just as BS as wanting to smoke pot, but acting like you are only interested in hemp clothing? How about saying your country stands for freedom while torturing people to support your own lies?

Bullshit positions (no matter how convenient or affordable) don’t lead to solutions. The RIAA posturing that the current, artist-screwing label structure is the only way for musicians to survive is BS. So is pretending that you illegally downloaded a song because you love The Beastie Boys just that much.

Even the Gawker empire (and their month long, anti-DRM rant and their copyright/royalty discussion) might be starting to realize that their RIAA jihad is not where the solutions lie.

April addendum: This is an important point that I meant to cover in another post, but I never quite got around to that "other post" so I will add it here. Pirating music (or movies or Halo expansion packs) hurts you. I imagine that anyone who has taken the time to get to this point on this blog somehow works in music/media/entertainment - or at least has visions of doing so. If you want to be the next Spielberg, why would you want to participate in an action that steals from artists you love AND decreases your chances for getting your own shot to direct a feature film (that you don't finance with Grandma's inheritance). Copyrights (or whatever the "intellectual property 2.0" deal will be called) protect me and, since you are reading this, probably you as well. Why shoot myself in the foot?

I have no idea what the future of the music industry will be. It certainly won’t look like what we have now. There will be many changes, and that is as it should be. But I do know that …

Any effective change will be based on reality. The reality is that people like to get stuff/music for free and right now they are getting as much of that free product as they want. So the solution does NOT lie in acting like downloading is caused by “extreme music love” or “angsty defiance” or “justified disaffection with cultural structures.”

Getting people the music they want, as easily as possible and at a fair price is the goal.

The solution will come from people who understand that illegal downloading is driven by the most basic of instincts. Greed.

Acknowledging that, is the first step. This is one area where the RIAA is actually out in front.

Kumbaya, snitches!

Labels: death, download, music video, RIAA, selling

Make sure you read the previous posts on viral videos or you will be wondering why I am starting with the number four.

Once again, I am back to pontificate on why I think the whole “viral video” thing is such a non-factor in the world of music videos. There is some reasonable debate over what is and isn't a viral video. I would probably categorize a video as viral if it is getting passed around for it's visual impact, humor, shock value, and so on. "Hey, check out the new video from the band I like, Silversun Pickups" would not really be a viral thing in my book. Drop a comment if you disagree.

What I mean by “non-factor”
Before you go on about how wrong I am and how I should look at OkGo – please read the previous post. I like OkGo. They seem like fun. Their videos were cool and took lots of dedication – but so f*%&ing-what. The point of a music video is to get people to buy your record and those videos, despite massive hype in all kinds of mainstream media, did not do the job. As Xzibit would say – “Check the soundscan.”

But attention CAN lead to sales, right? Sure, but if the avalanche (based on indie music scale) of attention the treadmill dudes got won’t do it, nothing your band can come up with will. Big time advertisers go viral to help out wacky sports related comedy films and bite-sized cars – but for those products the, viral video is a tiny, tiny part of the marketing. For most musical artists, the music video (viral or not) might be the whole marketing campaign.

And attention, in and of itself, is not success (or money or career). Just “getting attention” is what the tap-dancing homeless guy does on the street corner or the self-destructive goth girl at your high school that blew everyone and then realized maybe she didn’t want that kind of attention. Music videos have to turn attention into a purchase – and viral videos do that about as well as the slutty girl turned a BJ into a relationship.

Reason #4 why I largely dismiss the power of viral videos:
Viral videos make the wrong kind of impression.
The thing that draws us to watch viral videos is that the images stand out. They are visual jokes or unexpected bursts of violence/sex that entertain us for a moment – then are gone. We like them, but we don’t love them. And breaking out the credit card takes love.

Some real famous YouToogle clips are the mentos experiment guys and the trampoline bear. Most everyone has seen these clips. Ask people on the street and they will nod in acknowledgement when you say “diet coke and mentos.” What people DON’T want is to know more about the breath-mint-ologists or hear what kind of songs the tranquilized bear might have recorded on Garage Band.

The connection viral video watchers have with a high-speed freeway chase or a father getting blasted in the nuts by his oblivious child is very different from the kind of connection music fans have with their favorite bands. In fact, I would say that the kind of viral attention drawn by water-skiing squirrel actually works against the viewer taking anything to do with that video seriously.

The term is “a mile wide, but an inch deep.” Interest in viral videos is just that – a mile wide and an inch deep. Everyone wants to watch the 20 second trampoline bear video clip, no one wants to buy the trampoline bear DVD.

Not only is the viral video impression a shallow one – I believe it makes the artist come across as cheap and disposable. If I can get this for free at any point in time by typing “okgo treadmill” into a web-browser, why should I pay real money for it? What makes this something to own rather than something that lives on the web I can call up whenever I feel like it?

In conclusion, viral video might make some kind of impression – but it is not the kind of attention you want. Unless you are still rocking the black lip-stick and hanging around under the bleachers after practice.

Labels: media, music video, selling, viral video, YouTube

Beyonce is everywhere. From the cover of Sports Illustrated’s no-longer-controversial swimsuit issue to the red carpet of whatever awards show is shutting her out this time. Miss B is gorgeous and talented and every-fucking-where. And it looks like she is blowing it.

Beyonce’s “Irreplaceable” has topped the singles charts since the last BSB record (or so it seems) – so how can I say she is blowing it? She is fixing to marry Hova, right?

This piece was on Idolator Thursday, referencing how Beyonce’s dad, Matthew Knowles (manager of both Kelly and Beyonce) has decided to push back the release of Kelly’s new CD.

Now Kelly's album is once again being pushed back but this time to make room for the re-release of Solange's "Solo Star"

For Solange?!? Ouch! That lets Kelly know where she ranks.

This is just a rumor, but what a juicy one. I have heard that Kelly’s first single (with guest rapper Eve) has gone out to video directors for treatments – so Kelly’s album might be out real soon. On the other hand, Matthew and his Sanctuary Urban Records (hey, they manage the fat guy from D12) have pushed Kelly’s record before, but at least then it was for big sister B.

Maybe Beyonce and her father are pushing around the career of Kelly Rowland, but how is that “blowing it?” Well this latest “scheduling change” is just the latest in a line of decisions Sanctuary has made to “help” Beyonce stay on top – but this maneuvering might end up burning out the public’s interest in their star talent and sour the rest of the entertainment industry on working with them.

No one in Hollywood cares if the Knowles’s screw with one of B’s back-up singers, but movie folks definitely care if they mess up the careful marketing plans of major motion pictures. As of mid-February, Dreamgirls has still not broken $100mil in domestic BO. It was a pricey film to make and I imagine this financial performance is considered a disappointment.

The original plan was for Beyonce’s album to come out in March/April of ‘07 – well AFTER the release of Dreamgirls. That would have left the Autumnal months of 2006 as a Beyonce-free zone, whetting everyone’s appetite for B’s December appearances to promote Dreamgirls and the soundtrack of same. By the time the video for “Listen” came out in early December – viewers had already seen three Beyonce videos from her “B’Day” CD in the past 2 and a half months. Instead of eager, I bet most audience were burned out on B.

Dreamworks and Paramount were NOT happy that they were getting much, much less mileage out of the song and video from the movie since TV and radio were already saturated with Beyonce. There were some rumors of complaints from movie types, but no one came out to directly criticize the decision to move up the “B’day” release. Imagine how much more excited B’s fans would have been to see the clip for “Listen” if they had not already seen the videos for “Crazy in Love II”, “That Weird Basic Instinct Video” and “The One Beyonce Song Everyone Likes” so recently.

One of the main reasons a movie studio casts any star in a film is for promotional purposes. Brad Pitt does the cover of Vanity Fair and Leno to promote his new movie. That is part of why he gets paid millions to be in movies – because he gets the word out better than someone who is a good actor (Geoffrey Rush) but people don’t care about. The producers of Dreamgirls must have thought they were getting the same thing when they signed Beyonce. “She can sing like crazy AND she will get us major press.” Then she goes out and over-exposes herself on every TV show in the fall and much of that promotional value Dreamworks/Par paid for is lost by the time December rolls around.

It is it any wonder that the producers started talking about and hyping Jennifer Hudson so much? I bet that there were conversations at 5555 Melrose about pushing the “other” Dreamgirl to the forefront because of Beyonce’s lessened promotional value AND to punish her and her father for their hubris.

By releasing her own album in September 2006, Beyonce hurt her own value to the producers of her star-making movie “debut”, she made her cameos on Jay-Z’s record less interesting, she got less out of Jay’s appearance on her own “Déjà Vu” single, AND she messed with her “best friend” Kelly’s release date once again. Beyonce and Matthew just couldn’t wait and they choked the marketplace with too much of the one thing the should be keeping special – Beyonce. Sometimes you CAN have too much of a good thing.

Going forward, Beyonce will still be famous. She will sell many records over her long career. She will still be a great singer and a gorgeous young woman. She will still be way cooler than me. But, what Beyonce seems to really want is to be a movie star and after crossing up the promotion for a big-time holiday film, Beyonce will probably find it harder and harder to get what she wants out of the studios.

And now Beyonce is shooting a slew of new videos to create a multi-media re-release of “B’Day.” Talk about coming on strong. I’m gonna be seeing more of her than I do of my real-life girl. It might be time for an intervention. “Beyonce, you are hot and all, but I need my space. Let’s talk again at the end of the summer, okay?”

Labels: Beyonce, music video, philosophy, selling

The way music videos are seen by people (a topic endlessly discussed here) today doesn’t just change the way labels/prod cos/directors profit from them – it changes what music videos do.

Obviously, music video discussion sites like this one, SRO or antville are not for the casual fan. If you are interested in what other commenters think of the long-awaited Grizzly video, whether a thirty year old film is a music video, or what technique was used on some motion control shot, you are not a normal music video consumer. And videos on the web are perfect for you.

The Intratubes are great if you want to find a particular video from the past or, a new clip that hasn’t really hit TV yet (onsmash is great for urban new-ness), or a video that will never, ever get on television. But the web is NOT good for introducing viewers to new artists. Web videos don’t reach new record buyers, but Disney Channel does.

If you are YouToogling “LCD Soundsystem” you have already purchased or downloaded all the music of theirs you care to have. If you sought out a particular file out of the billions on the world wide web, you are already a fan and watching the video on-line has no chance of turning into more sales for the musicians involved (which was the original goal of MVs, by the way).

The reason radio did (does?) rule is because it reaches new ears. MTV (back in the good ole days) did the same – sending out music that the audience may not have heard in the hopes of creating new fans. On radio/music television people can stumble across something they haven’t heard before and that is how an industry expands.

If anyone is watching a video on the band’s site, they are not exactly new fans. And that seems to be the way 85% of videos are viewed these days – dialed up by the folks that already know about the music and the artist. Like a politician making a dynamic speech in his home district, the impression might be strong but it means nothing – since the audience is already on board.

Some videos have gotten a lot of heat in the video dork community of which I am a member. The whole Death Cab for Cutie makes a bazillion $353.28 videos thing was a big story on antville and the like but very few people bought that album. The fact that all us insiders heard about the videos or watched them all a dozen times and commented on which one was best means about nothing to record labels that are busy trying to not go under or decide what the budget for the next video should be.

Music videos have become more and more like the VW keychain that Volkswagen dealers mail out to people who have just bought a new Jetta. The keychain is cool, but it is rewarding existing fans – not building new ones. No matter how cool that keychain is, it can’t convince your neighbor, or the guy across town who has never seen it, that he too, should look into buying a VW.

I love music videos and I think that they can connect audiences with artists in ways that almost nothing else can. I just wish it didn’t feel so much we are preaching to the choir.

Labels: antville, insider, label, music video, selling, viral video, YouTube