Barn Productions Blog

Whitney & Michael

With the media still buzzing about the death of Whitney Houston, it made me think about the parallels to the passing of Michael Jackson in 2009.  And there are a lot of parallels.

Both are superstars from the 80’s.  Neither had produced anything particularly good in almost twenty years preceding their death.  Both had almost completely fallen out of stardom, with the exception of unrelenting tabloid coverage.  And both had severely abused themselves, with the help of drugs, and in turn, became almost unrecognizable iterations of their former selves, both physically and personally.

Despite that neither of these stars were of old age, no one can be particularly surprised at their passing.  A single look at either of them would tell you that they were not in good health.  But that certainly doesn’t ease the sense of loss that people everywhere have felt upon their deaths.

I can understand that people feel sad about Whitney and Michael’s deaths because someone who has influenced them, made memories with them and has contributed to their life in general, is now gone.  But what has really changed with their passing?  What have really lost?  Let’s be honest: neither has contributed much to the collective consciousness in a long time.  (That is, except tabloid fodder.)  They haven’t released new material (at least not any worthwhile) and they haven’t even been touring or performing live.  In reality, we lost Michael and Whitney somewhere in the first half of the 90’s.

While talking to a friend about Whitney Houston, it suddenly dawned on me what’s really at the root of everyone’s sadness.  Collectively, we have all been holding on to a shimmer of hope that one day, these stars would return to the limelight, and it would be awesome.  Just like it used to be.  Especially given that they weren’t too old for it to be possible.  The loss of that hope is what we’re really reacting to.

Some of my biggest influences; makers of my most beloved music, have died before I was even born (John Lennon to name just one).  Let us not forget that the great contributions that they made to our lives can never be undone.  They don’t need to be here for that to be true.

Re: Remastering iTunes

Today, Sound & Vision Magazine posted a review on three pieces of audio software that claim to remaster the output of your iTunes:

Sound & Vision Magazine: Remastering iTunes

To get right to the point - DO NOT use these plug-ins in an attempt to “enhance your iTunes experience”.  As a musician, producer and audio engineer, I find these plug-ins to be blasphemous; almost insulting.  But even to the unschooled listener, they diminish your ability to appreciate the unique sound of each record, and moreover, they will likely fatigue your ears.  I will do my best to explain in layman’s terms how these plug-ins work and why they are bad:

Multi-band compression - This means that they separate the bass, mid and treble of an audio signal and compress them each individually.  Why this is bad: Many people claim that music today is fatiguing to the ears.  The reason that is so is because of compression (audio compression, not data compression like an MP3). Modern music is heavily compressed.  The “loudness war” has been a point of contention within the music industry for over a decade now.  With music already being super-loud and fatiguing to the ears, why would you want a plug-in that will make it even louder and more fatiguing?

EQ - After compressing the discrete frequency ranges of the audio, they adjust the volume of each section of frequencies to their likeness.  Why this is bad: Ever notice how R&B, Soul and Gospel records tend to have silky-smooth high end and a nice pronounced bass.  Yet a modern rock record tends to have less bass and a crunchy mid-range.  That’s not accidental.  Records that are professionally mixed and mastered have been intentionally given a tone by those who worked on that record; the producer, mixing and mastering engineers.  Passing music through these plug-ins changes the sound the record was intended to have.  Additionally, they make anything that goes through them sound uniform.  Not only is this equatable to cranking the contrast on the Mona Lisa until the colors look fluorescent, it’s like doing it to every piece of art in The Louvre so their tones and colors are all the same.  What’s more, these consumer audio plug-ins notoriously boost the bass and treble while cutting the mid-range.  But every schooled listener knows that the mid-range is where all the details are.

Distortion - Not the kind you think.  Many one-size-fits all mastering processors add what is called ‘third harmonic distortion’.  There’s really no way to explain this in layman terms, but what it equates to for the listener is an added “sparkle” to the sound.  Why this is bad: Third harmonic distortion is an old trick-of-the-trade, used in many professional grade signal processors like the Aphex Aural Exciter or T.C. Electronics Finalizer.  There is no way these consumer grade plug-ins can execute this effect to the level of the above-said processors, which are extremely expensive.  But more importantly, this effect was often used to give certain elements, like lead vocals or solos, a “special” sound, that separated it from other musical elements in the mix.  If the effect is applied to the entire mix, it’s like looking for a needle in a… well, stack of needles.

What these plug-ins are good for:

There is a time and place for everything, and for these types of plug-ins, it’s events.  These plug-ins are good for any event that will have a lot of people and continuous music.  Weddings, clubs, concerts (canned music in between sets) and even house parties.

Ever been at a party or event where Jay-Z’s 99 Problems is followed-up by Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody.  Everyone was rocking-out a minute ago, but now you can barely hear the music above the noise of the crowd.

These plug-ins will definitely rectify that problem.  The multi-band compression I described earlier makes sure that anything that runs through it will not only be the same loudness, but will have the same amount of bass and treble from track to track.  No matter what you run through it; Elvis to Eminem, The Beatles to Black Eyed Peas, Frank Sinatra to Foo Fighters.

If you’re not actively listening to the music, then I say no harm, no foul.  Otherwise, steer clear of these signal processors, if you know what’s good for you.

-Rob Harkness, Barn Productions

Watch the Recording Industry’s Demise in 30 Seconds

Cool info graphic posted on good.is, depicting the music industry’s revenue source(s) from 1980-2010:

You can see where it starts, in 1980, where LPs account for almost 100% of music industry’s revenue.  In a thirty-year period, we see tape cassettes sweep through to take the spot as the industry’s cash-cow and we se it happen again, with CDs.  However, in the last decade, music sales are not only down, but scattered amongst many different mediums.

What this shows me is that the record industry, through the 90’s, mistakenly thought that is was selling a physical commodity, like clothes or cars.  However, with art and entertainment, when consumers buy a physical object, like an LP, CD or DVD, they aren’t buying it for the object - they’re buying it for it’s content.  In other words, you don’t buy a CD because you want a plastic discus.  You buy a CD because you want the music that’s on it.

For the first seventy years of selling records, the limitations of technology did not allow for a disconnect of the physical commodity from the content.  However, if the industry had enough foresight to see where technology was going and understood that they were selling music not records, they wouldn’t be in the decline they’re in now.

By acting only a few years before the advent of the iTunes Music Store, they could’ve gotten everyone into the habit of using legitimate routes to get music.  Doing this would have thwarted the birthing culture of piracy that has now become a common part of our digital vernacular.  For average layman, getting pirated media is not convenient nor particularly easy to do, even to this day.  Yet, in the years it took the music industry to react, the world learned how to effectively use the black market.

They Took Our Jerbs!

Published last week in the New York Times, internet providers have agreed to start penalizing customers suspected of digital copyright infringement.  

Ugh…  How long are the media companies of Hollywood and the music industry going to point their fingers at piracy?  Are they really convinced that piracy is the reason for their failing business?  More importantly, do they really think that policing piracy in this way will change anything?

You can bring a horse to the trough, but you can’t make it drink.

If they want people to stop pirating media, they have to give them a reason to pay for it; not a reason to not steal it.  It seems so surprising to me that none of the media companies have figured out that it isn’t about the content, it’s about how we access the content.

We used to have a simple, consolidated source for our entertainment; radio and television.  Today, we have many different sources for our entertainment needs; iTunes, Amazon, Hulu, Netflix, Pandora, Last.fm, Rhapsody, Cable TV, SiriusXM Radio.  The list goes on and on.  And making headlines across the country this week, a new one will be entering the US market - Spotify.

Each of these various resources for media have something they bring to the table, whether it’s ease-of-use, a way to find new entertainment tailored to the user’s taste, or simply a large library of content.

Looking to keep things simple, most people pick a few of these sources for their media.  To set up an account for each one and learn how each one functions seems like a daunting task.  Not to mention the discrepancies that occur when we throw our technological devices in the mix.  Is there an iPhone/iPad app?  Droid? Does it work on X-Box Live?  How about the PlayStation Network?  It seems like it would be nearly impossible to even retain all that information.

The real problem is that none of these media sources have it all.  And by “all”, I mean all the content we seek, in one place, easy to use and available on any platform.  For example, Pandora has a large library of content, yet you can’t pick the song you want to hear when you want to hear it.  Amazon has it’s streaming content and cloud music service, but it doesn’t synergize with Apple products the way iTunes does.

Just this week, Netflix announced that it will be changing it’s pricing schemes.  They have decided to completely separate their DVD-by-mail plan from their online streaming plan.  Now, if you want both, as most Netflix subscribers did, you have to pay for two separate plans.  This has outraged many of Netflix’s customers.  The reason they’re outraged is because this change is messing up the flow of their media consumption, and putting a higher price on an inconvenience consumers have already learned to live with.

Most Netflix subscribers really do wish that they only needed the online streaming service.  The problem is that Netflix’s online streaming service lacks a large portion of it’s DVD catalogue.  So subscribers who use Netflix predominantly for it’s streaming service, use the DVD-by-mail service as the occasional fall-back for the content that they really wanted, but couldn’t access via online streaming.  So why would Netflix customers want to pay extra for the occasional DVD that they wish they could have watched streaming to begin with?

They don’t.  And they won’t.

With the uproar over the change in Netflix’s price tiers, a single mantra is being heard again and again from the mouths of upset customers: I would pay a lot more than the DVD+streaming plans, for just online streaming - if Netflix’s entire DVD catalogue was accessible online.

Simply put, the media companies, run by old suits, move slowly in adapting to new technologies, until their confident they can do so on their terms.  But by the time they finally do make a move, it’s a day late and a dollar short.

If only the content makers would see that if paying for media was convenient and consolidated source for consumers, piracy may simply evaporate on it’s own.

Much of this problem comes from Silicon Valley, where the tech giants are currently competing to see their platform prevail.  Not to mention, that the media corporations should consider focusing on content that people actually feel is worth paying for.  But that’s a conversation for another time…

Welcome Lauren Passarelli!

We are proud to welcome Lauren Passarelli to the Barn Productions community!  We are excited to have 50 of Lauren’s songs recently added to our licesing library.  Lior is already hard at work finding placements for these amazing tracks.

Lauren came into town this week to attend Seth Swirsky’s 50th Birthday Party and she was nice enough to bring me along.  Seth, an established songwriter himself, had quite the gathering at his home in Beverly Hills.  Many of the uper-echelon of the music industry were present.  (Seth just finished a really cool Beatles documentary “A Year In The Life”, check out the trailer.)

Lauren & myself had a great time at Seth’s!  We got to chat with former Wings guitarist & record producer, Laurence Juber, as well as Breakfast With The Beatles host, Chris Carter.  I met with both the President and Vice President of Sony Music Publishing (and will be meeting with them again next week!).  We got to have our picture taken by famous rock ‘n’ roll photographer, Henry Diltz (Crosby, Stills & Nash, James Taylor, Paul & Linda McCartney, The Doors… to name a few).  Star of the music-based TV show of the 60’s, The Monkees, Davy Jones performed a private concert for the party.  Then Lauren had an acoustic jam with Seth & Davy while the rest of the party sang along!  Could not have been more fun!!

Lauren Passarelli has been a professor in the guitar department at Berklee College Of Music for the last 26 years.  What’s even more impressive is that Lauren became the first woman to graduate from Berklee as a guitar performance major in 1982.  Then in 1984, she became the first female guitar instructor at Berklee!

Lauren is Berklee’s resident Beatles teacher; she teaches Guitar Styles Of The Beatles, The Berklee Beatles Ensemble and private guitar instruction to name a few.  I met Lauren when I enrolled in The Beatles Ensemble class my 4th semester at Berklee.  Lauren and I instantly clicked on our love of The Beatles’ music.  I believe Lauren also appeciated my attention to detail when it came to replicating The Beatles records to a T.

Additionally, I proved myself a team player, as I performed three times in the ensemble (only once for credit) and I filled any role needed.  In all three semesters I played various instruments: rhythm guitar, lead guitar, bass, keys, drums, hand percussion - almost all while singing.  There were many songs I even had to switch instruments for different sections of the song.

I was fortuate enough to have anough time to jam out on some Beatles songs with Lauren for old time’s sake.  I video recorded and multitracked the whole jam session.  I will post it up as soon as I’m done editing out all the boring stuff so keep an eye out for it!

Suck it, Viacom!

Viacom has lost a milestone court battle against YouTube.  

The (evil) conglomerate has been attempting to sue Google since 2007 for copyright infringement, claiming that YouTube has always been aware of copyright protected materials being posted by users and that it has, in fact, been using it to their advantage, knowing it generates spikes in traffic.

The court disagreed, and rightfully so.  The court stated that as long as YouTube (or any user-posting site) implements reasonable takedown procedures when they become aware of infringing posts, they are not liable. Duh.

Of course Viacom, with the backing of several Hollywood studios, intends to appeal the court decision.

I have to say, YouTube is pretty good about yanking copyrighted materials.  I regularly find shells of video posts when looking for specific clips.  I think man other people have had this experience: search for a clip, find it in the listing, click on it, and… black screen with the message saying the video has been pulled due to copyright infringement.

What more do the Hollywood studios want?  YouTube can’t possibly implement a way to preemptively stop users from posting any given copyrighted material (Google Future™ coming in 2012).  What the studios really want is for YouTube to cease to exist.

Do all the major studios (movies and music alike) have retards running them or what?  Someone needs to tell them that the internet has arrived.

The digital revolution is upon us; the old industry models for generating revenue no longer apply.  They just keep fighting, trying to hang on to this antiquated business structure and it is so clearly not working.

What they should be doing is licensing the materials to sites like YouTube and making sure their content is easily found and is the best possible definition and fidelity.  If they did that, there would be no reason for YouTubers to post material that are already there.  Viewers would no look no further, especially when so many user posts have terrible video and/or sound quality.  

If the studios did this, they would easily monopolize the YouTube views of the materials they own.  When you have millions of people watching your videos, there are tons of ways to make money.  License fees, advertising, product placements, sponsors.

Furthermore, when viewers regularly watch your materials, you create fans.
There’s tons of ways to make residual  income when you have fans. Merchandise, limited editions/special collections, live performances, to name a few.  For god’s sake, fans hold and attend conventions!!!
This is another case of why dinosaurs must die.  Even Charles Darwin said, it’s not the strongest species that survive, it’s the species that is best at adapting.  I can’t understand how such powerful executives who should understand business can’t see how they aren’t adapting and how it will be their downfall.  

How can they not see all these alternate methods to make money while others do?

At this point the creative community just needs them to finally keel over so we can finally get on with the future.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100624/media_nm/us_google_hollywood

Words Of Wisdom From Thom Yorke

My business partner, Anthony, just sent me this article, which I found very exciting!Thom Yorke summarizes the state of major record labels.  In short, they’re on verge of completely dying.  Personally, I’m happy to hear it – dinosaurs must die.This also very exciting for Barn Productions; it means we’re onto something…I think the one thing that article glazed over is that, despite Thom Yorke’s praise of DIY sales and marketing for artists, Radiohead would not have been nearly as successful if they had not had the full-force of a major label behind them when they started.  So there will always be some value in having some label support, especially for budding artists.However, eventually that “support”  starts to feel more like a trap.  This was definitely the case in Radiohead’s scenario when they decided to walk away from EMI.This why I’m happy that our agreements are all non-exclusive.  So we offer the pros of a label, without the cons.Imagine that EMI hadn’t been gouging Radiohead so badly on their first several records.  Radiohead would likely have stayed with EMI indefinitely.  Now imagine that EMI was doing marketing and distribution *in conjunction* with Radiohead’s “pay what you want” campaign for their In Rainbows album, instead of being an *opposing* model.If that had happened, Radiohead would be happy (and rich), and both the band and EMI would be making money from both sources.  That’s basically what we do at Barn Productions.  It’s simply win-win.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/17386/112454