Round One! Fight!

There are a lot of these "made to order" merch stores that target bands cropping up - Spreadshirt, Toto Merch, Reverbnation's Reverb Store/Audiolife, Streetshops to name but a few.

The idea is that the band doesn't have to get merch made in advance, it can be made to order with the store taking £X and then the artist able to set however much they want to make on top of that set price. For the bands it is a no risk way to sell merch, for the store it's all about the long tail. All good so far.

The Reverb Store and Audiolife (essentially using the same software) also allow bands to sell MP3s and made to order CDs within their store. Nice.

However, they are ALL missing a trick. Any one of these store solutions could become the absolute ultimate in online merch store providers if they just added a couple of features.

If any store manages to tick all of the following boxes then they will win this game. Everyone else can go home.

Made to order merch

Yep, everyone ticks that box. It's the core of their business and I am focusing on these companies instead of other online merch stores, such as Big Cartel, that don't offer made to order merch.

Various currencies

It sounds obvious, but this is the WORLD WIDE web. Bands will have a fanbase that is largely based in one country. Let them set the currency. At the moment, Reverb Store and Audiolife are only available in USD.

Digital music sales

Allow us to put MP3s for sale. If you're feeling REALLY cool, let us give them away. So far, just Reverb Store/Audiolife allow you to sell music.

Let us sell our OWN products in the store.

This for me is the big one. I may not be able to afford 100 bulk T shirts, but I can afford to hand make some really awesome limited edition tapes. Let me sell these alongside the made to order merch, seamlessly in the same place, and you can take 10%. I'll sort out order fulfilment, you just give me that space to sell. Hell, maybe I DO have some bulk T shirts, why can't I sell those ALONGSIDE the ones already in the store? Again, here's 10% for your trouble. It's easy making money isn't it?

I don't even care if it's customisable or embeddable. Give me those features and I'm your's forever.

If just ONE of those stores up there did this, then there would be no need for bands to have separate merchandise, MP3 and physical music stores, regardless of budget or size of band.

The point is that this would be so easy for those companies to do that it's ridiculous that it hasn't been done already. If anyone listens to me who can do this, do it. You'll make millions.

I am a musician.

If I was to list every problem with your service for musicians then there would simply not be enough space on the internet to hold this blog post. For now I have one simple request:

Delete the option "unsigned" for bands and artists.

We are not unsigned. The internet age has blurred the lines between bands and the record labels that they used to rely on. We now have access to full world wide distribution, we can target the "new" press - the blogs - and get our voices heard, we can promote directly to the people who are likely to enjoy our music. We have the power.

We are not unsigned. We are DIY. You MADE us DIY.

As a good friend of mine remarked "the label 'unsigned' suggests that you actually want to be 'signed'".

The difference between the DIY scene and the Independent labels is simply one of experience and contacts. Given time DIY naturally becomes independent. They are one and the same, it is just a case of semantics and time.

The difference between DIY & independent labels and major labels is one of longevity. DIY/Independents have it, majors don't.

The times, they are a changing. You, Myspace, ensured that happened in your early days. The problem is that you still believe in the "unsigned". You need to change in order to survive. Other services are doing things better for musicians, because they don't believe in unsigned, they believe in DIY. If you have any chance of continuing to be the "go to" place for musicians, then you need to embrace DIY. Everything else should logically follow.

So, let's all agree, from now on, we can choose "Independent", "Major", or "DIY".

Any artist who wishes to be referred to as "unsigned" has only themselves to blame.

ITV just LOVE to patronise Africa during this World Cup. Have fun by playing along to their coverage with this handy drinking game!

(Warning: Playing this game will result in certain death through alcohol poisoning)

1 Shot when:

• The team is referred to by their nickname (notice this NEVER happens with any of the European/Asian/South/North American nations)
• Images of townships/smiling children are used in the build up
• Shots of the crowd are acompanied with "They are LOVING just being here" from the commentator.

2 Shots when:

• The continent of Africa is spoken about as if it is one nation OR a phrase like "Africa is united behind _____" is used.
• A team or country is described using the words "proud", "brave", "colourful" or "culture".

3 Shots when:

• ANY African politician/dignatory/religious leader/freedom fighter is mentioned, regardless of the relevance to either the match, or the country involved.
• Clive Tyldesley attempts to speak in an African dialect

There you go, feel free to add your own rules and get completely and utterly smashed.

I don't talk about football on here, but aside from music it is my other first love.

Last night I watched the worst England football performance I have ever seen, and like every single person who watched that game, I have some views on why it went wrong.

I actually think that one thing is wrong with the England team: Fabio Capello.

Now, I'm not usually one to jump all over a manager, but there are several things that I believe Capello has got catastrophically wrong.

The Media/Hype

Back in 1996, during our last really good performance in a major tournament, England football was still covered in the newspaper back pages. Now every single move is front page news and every tiny mistake leads to a player being utterly crucified by the media. It's not cool, and the media have to take responsibility, but this is unfortunately the way of the world right now, so the matter has to be dealt with.

Capello has done absolutely nothing to deflect this pressure away from the team, and indeed has actually managed to increase the pressure exerted by the media through his own stubborness and, dare I say it, arrogance.

For example, Rob Green makes a mistake in a match. It happens. If you're a defender or a striker you usually get away with it, but if you're a goalkeeper then usually it results in a goal. We all understand that. If this had been Sir Alex Fergusson or Arsene Wenger or Jose Mourinho then in the post match interview you can bet your bottom dollar that the response would have been "I have complete faith in Rob, he's our keeper". There. Done. No more speculation.

Instead, Capello allowed the media to speculate for an entire week about the goalkeeping situation and then dropped Green 2 hours before the start of this game. The message this sends out to all of the England players is "make one mistake, and you're dropped". This would explain why every single player last night played like they were terrified.

Squad/Team Selection

I think we have heard plenty about Capello's insistance on a 4-4-2 formation that simply does not suit our best players, and his reluctance to play someone like Joe Cole who is a consistent performer for England, but let's consider 2 players that are not in South Africa.

One is, outside Rooney, the top scoring English striker in the Premiership this season, and one is the English Goalkeeper who has kept more clean sheets than any other in the Premiership this season. Both feats achieved in mediocre mid table teams. Darren Bent and Paul Robinson. Whatever happened to Capello picking on form?

When Sven and McLaren were usurped, one of the major criticisms of both was their reluctance to drop big name players and pick on form. When Capello came in we thought this had all changed. But think about it - how different was last night's starting 11 to the team that played under Sven and McLaren? Capello has fallen into the same old trap of trying to force Lampard and Gerrard into a 4 man midfield. It will never work. Either change your formation to suit them, or change your selection to suit your formation. You can't make it work.

He's lost the players

Johnson, Terry, Carragher, Cole, Lennon, Lampard, Gerrard, Barry, Heskey, Rooney. Not a single one of these players plays for a team outside of the top 6 Premiership clubs. Several have competed in and even won Champions League finals, and several are covetted by the greatest teams in the world. They are undoubtedly world class individuals surrounded by very very good players.

So why is it they can't string together two passes against a team that only a couple of months ago Republic of Ireland beat 3-0? It has to be a mental problem.

And ultimately, the mental state of the team is Capello's responsibility, and he has spectacularly failed. The players are not playing for him, they are playing in spite of him.

---

I can't really see how this is going to turn around. We need a manager who has the balls to make difficult decisions, but understand how to man manage our players. Unfortunately I don't think that Capello is capable of doing either.

As an England and football fan, I really hope I'm wrong.

My mum received an email today from a company called 'Asia DM' - asiadm.org - that said the following

"Dear  Principal,       
                                        
We are  a domain name disputed registration service company in HongKong, which mainly deal with international company's in Asia,We have something important need to confirm with your company.

On the Apr. 20, 2010, we received an application formally. One company named J.E & Being Holding Limited applied for the internet keyword "gill-blenco-educational" and some domain names relevant to this trademark from our organization..
According to our procedures and in order to protect your intellectual property rights, we need to send this email to the original company for confirming the actual relationship with this company. because that may relate to your intellectual property on internet. Now we have not finished the registration of  J.E & Being Holding Limited yet, in order to deal with this issue better and not to confuse registering these domain names, please let someone who is responsible for trademark or domain name contact me as soon as possible.
 
In addition, we hereby affirm that our time is limited for dissent application . If your company files no dissent within the time limit,we will unconditionally approve the application submitted by J.E & Being Holding Limited.
 
(PS:If you are not in charge of this matter,please transfer this email to appropriate dept.)
 
Best Regards
 Henry Luo
Internet Copyright (Auditing) Dept."

'Gill Blenco Educational' is her company offering educational training to schools. She replied:

"This company has no relationship to me or my company. Please refuse their request. Yours Gill Blenco, Director of Gill Blenco Educational Ltd. "

And then received this:

"Dear Gill Blenco,
 
Glad to receive your reply. 
We know that you have the intellectual property for"gill-blenco-educational".we have found that J.E & Being Holding Limited is not the owner of "gill-blenco-educational".this is why we sent email to inform your company the matter.
 
Now J.E & Being Holding Limited wanted to apply for domain names gill-blenco-educational.com/ gill-blenco-educational.cn/ gill-blenco-educational.com.cn/ gill-blenco-educational.hk/ gill-blenco-educational.com.hk you have not registered yet.Pls confirm if their application these domain name will affect your company?
 
You should know that the domain name takes open registration in world,This is international domain name registration principle,So J.E & Being Holding Limited has right to register it.As a domain name registrar, we have no right to dispute their application.But as the company whose trademarks relate to the applied domains.You will get the priority to register these domain names.We will stop dealing with the registration of the third party temporarily according to our rules.
 
If you don't think their application will affect your benefit,you can give up,we will finish their registration,But if you think these domain names are useful for you,we can send the disputed application form and price list to you and help you register these within dispute period.Pls let us know your decision soon.so that we can handle the next step.
 
Best Regards
 Henry Luo
Internet Copyright (Auditing) Dept."

To me, this seems like a scam to get her to register these domain names at what I suspect would be an extortionate price.

First of all, if I register a domain name with my company of choice, UK Reg, they don't spend time checking to see if there are any companies out there who might have trademarked a similar name. If it's available it is mine.

Secondly, who would gain any advantage by registering these sets of domains? It's not like they're trying to register McDonalds.co.uk

I could be wrong, but it looks dicey to me, and I'm 99.9% sure I'm right.

Thing is, this is a clever scam, because it plays upon people's fears in an area they are not familiar with, but know is important. I am familiar with this area, and even I had to re read this several times before deciding that it was a scam.

Am I right?

Sales were helped massively I'd say - we've sold 80 copies so far, which is more than most bands of this size are selling. They're a very small regional
band and few people had heard of them before they signed to my label. Similar releases in the past had taken a few months to shift that many, some didn't get anywhere near that."

I will start of this post by saying, I do not know who this is aimed at, it could be artists, it could be producers, it could be the BBC, but all I will say is that this post was inspired by two things - the band 'Title Fight' (who I gushed over yesterday), and the closure of BBC 6 Music. 

Last night I travelled to Leeds to see a triple bill of Polar Bear Club, Shook Ones, and The Title Fight play in a small dingy side room at the Cockpit (which itself is small and dingy).

I went to shows like this all the way through my formative years, and never thought anything of it, but now, a good few years since I last went to such an event, standing at the bar feeling decidedly 'too old for this shit' (Glover, 1987), I could think about the subculture that I know as 'Hardcore kids'.

The first thing that struck me that evening was the huge mix of ages, both on stage and in the crowd, and how young and old appeared to be 'as one' with no divide.

And by 'as one' I mean they were ALL going "fucking mental".

If you have never witnessed a mosh pit at a hardcore show then it is a bizarre mix of violence, anger and camaraderie. Arms are flailing and fists are clenched, with all the intent that suggests, but if somebody hits the deck they are immediately picked up and offered a consolidatory arm around the shoulder and quick singalong before festivities resume.

It's the closest you'll ever get to a real life fight club, set to fast punk rock music.

Violence at gigs isn't really my thing, but I get it. It's loud angry and incendiary music that is made for the kids, by the kids. No matter how old those kids get. The Title Fight and Shook Ones looked like they'd entered some sort of elaborate 'father and son band competition', with the former band making me feel decidedly old as their youth was only overshadowed by their brilliance. However, once Shook Ones burst into life onstage they were ageless. The power that music has means that you never need to grow up, not if you don't want to.