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Foo Fighters have now been Dave Grohl's chief concern for 20 years. The first 10 were spent minting the band's platinum-plated modern-rock sound, and the subsequent decade was spent trying to remold it... only to have it settle back into its predictable color and shape. Indeed, it's hard to distinguish one Foo Fighters album from another, since they all draw from the same well of arena-punk fist-pumpers, gentle comedown ballads, and arm-swaying sing-alongs that fall somewhere in between; as their Greatest Hits compilation made all too clear, a Foos song from 2007 sounds an awful lot like one from 1997. To his credit, Grohl seems well aware of the fine line between being unerringly consistent and relentlessly formulaic, and has tried to provide each new record with a fresh narrative. But these strategies have essentially amounted to hanging different frames around an unchanging picture-like a double-album opus that simply segregated the Foos' habitual whispers and screams, or a back-to-the-garage throwback seemingly designed for garages big enough to house private jets.

That said, Grohl's latest plan to drum up interest for a new record could be his most ingenious: make the most elaborate, expensive EPK in music history and have HBO distribute it. Sonic Highways is the name of both the Foos' eighth record and an accompanying, eight-part TV series documenting its ambitious, cross-country production process, with the band (alongside Butch Vig) recording each of its eight songs in a different city. It effectively blows up the concept of Grohl's 2013 film, Sound City, to a national scale: visit a renowned musical mecca, speak to the legends that put it on the map, and hope some of their mojo rubs off onto new recordings.

As a documentary, the Sonic Highways series takes full advantage of Grohl's unique status as a punk-spawned celebrity to deftly intertwine mainstream and underground rock histories. For instance, so far we've seen how Chicago-blues icons like Buddy Guy and noisy nihilists like Big Black were both fueled by the same impoverished necessity, or how hardcore pioneers Minor Threat and go-go greats Trouble Funk shone a light on the Washington that lurks in the shadow of Capitol Hill. As a promotional film for a new Foo Fighters album, however, it makes you wonder why its trailblazing subjects' transgressive influence didn't seep into the sound of final product.

Though it's all relative, Sonic Highways is the most adventurous Foo Fighters album to date, but it bends their trusty template in ways that bear little relation to the project's underlying musical-history-tour gambit. (It's not like hanging out with Bad Brains inspired a sharp left turn into light-speed D.C. hardcore, or digging up Roky Erickson's roots in Austin has introduced sunbaked psychedelia into the mix.) Rather, at eight tracks and 42 minutes, Sonic Highways is paradoxically the Foos' leanest record while boasting their most sprawling compositions, taking a more scenic route to their usual destinations.

Where most Foo Fighters songs have shown their hand by the first chorus, the highlights here gradually build up in step-like fashion: "Something From Nothing" may boast a typically teeth-clenching Foos climax, but it rides a surprisingly funky (if uncannily Dio-esque) organ groove to get there; "What Did I Do?/God As My Witness" stays well within Grohl's power-pop pocket, but its stop-start/two-part structure suggests Big Star's "Back of a Car" given a musical-theater makeover. And even songs that travel a straight-and-narrow path have a welcome sense of patience about them, revealing new melodic nuances along the way (like on the dreamy jangle-pop of "Subterranean") or, in the case of "Congregation", unexpected dynamic shifts: what starts off as a standard-issue, cruise-controlled rocker in the "Learn to Fly"/"Times Like These" mold acquires a more intense energy, thanks to an extended soul-stomping breakdown buoyed by Zac Brown's finger-picking.

But given the great logistical effort that went into the album's creation-and the fanboy reverence Grohl exhibits toward his interview subjects on each "Sonic Highways" episode-it's unfortunate that the regional essence of a given a song is barely perceptible without the televised exposition. Beyond illustrating that upbeat pop-punk is an odd forum for a discussion of the '68 D.C. race riots (see: "The Feast and the Famine"), the album boasts a bounty of special-guest ambassadors who are given little room to assert their personalities amid the Foos' chromatic crunch: the New Orleans Preservation Jazz Band doesn't have much to do on "In the Clear" but chirp up its mid-tempo riff; Joe Walsh's bluesy fills get lost in the fast lane of "Outside"; and good luck parsing out the presence of Joan Jett on "I Am a River", a gaudy Macy's Day Parade of a power ballad that, just when you think can't get any more overblown, piles on a false ending and string-section finale. The composite cityscape seen on Sonic Highways ' front cover proves to be all-too emblematic of the album's overall sound: a hodgepodge of aesthetic signifiers that get swallowed up into a monolithic whole.

Watching "Sonic Highways", you get the sense that the real purpose of the whole endeavor wasn't so much to reinterpret the musical traditions of a given city as simply broaden Grohl's lyrical perspective beyond his usual relationship-focussed ruminations and self-help affirmations. In some of the episodes that have aired so far, we see a shot of Grohl sitting down after completing his interviews to write a song based on all the local lore he's absorbed; the episodes then conclude with the Foos performing the resultant track, as the lyrics-loaded with knowing references to " muddy water," " the 13th floor," and " bluebirds"-are splashed across the screen practically begging for I-see-what-you-did-there acknowledgement. Ironically, in trying to tap into the mystique of America's most storied cities, Foo Fighters completely demystify their own creative process, effectively turning the Sonic Highways project into a glorified homework assignment-educational, perhaps, but laboriously procedural.

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Sonic Highways is the name of both the Foo Fighters' eighth record and an accompanying HBO series documenting its cross-country production process, wherein the band recorded each of its eight songs in a different city. The regional essence of a given song is barely perceptible without the exposition.

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It's almost a rite of passage every artist goes through in the modern music industry. The moment he accepts that he will not be able to rely on music sales to sustain his career. That people are not buying music like they used to. And never will again.

Just a few years ago it seemed like every artist was passing around articles chastising fans for illegally downloading music. How it hurts the bands. The producers. The session musicians. The labels (well no fan cares about them). The songwriters. And the industry as a whole. We all remember the "illegally downloading music is the same as stealing a microwave from a store" argument. We all bought it. Well, musicians and the industry that is. Fans? Not so much.

The RIAA sued over 35,000 fans for illegally downloading music back in the mid 2000s. We heard of 12 year olds being sued for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Grandmas whose grandsons downloaded music on their computers were taken to court and forced to go bankrupt. A grandfather actually died while in litigation and the RIAA told his family they had 60 days to grieve and then they better pay up!

Really great way to win over music's biggest fans. Sue them. That'll teach em!

But it didn't. Sales never went back up. And now it's reported that iTunes song downloads will drop 39% in five years.

Streaming revenue isn't making up for the loss in sales for musicians.

The jury is still out if it will in the long run. But, unfortunately, unlike sales, streaming revenue requires massive numbers to see significant income.

Previously, if an artist had 10,000 fans, she could rely on $70,000 ($10 album less iTunes 30% cut) in sales when a new album was released. However now, even if each fan listens to her (10 song) album on Spotify 10 times in the first few months (1,000,000 plays - impressive!), that would only earn her about $5,000 (and much much less if those plays were on YouTube). Even if she has 50,000 other fans who listen to the album only twice, that's just an additional $5,000.

No matter how you slice it, a small to mid level artist is not going to get by with streaming income the way the numbers work out currently. If we were talking about 5 cents a play versus a half a penny, then maybe.

I've been a strong supporter of streaming since its inception. I love that it rewards artist for creating great music that fans want to play over and over. There's much more potential for the long tail. The more someone likes your album, the more she will play it. And you will get paid for every play. Over time, sure, this could earn the artist much MORE money than sales.
+ Why Withholding Your Music From Spotify Only Hurts You
Only the artists getting millions of plays are seeing significant, livable income solely from streaming. And most of them are with labels who take the majority (to all) of that income.
+How To Steal An Artist's Streaming Money In 3 Easy Steps
So what are the solutions?

You could scream about streaming and piracy until you're red in the face while fans and technology ignore the noise and move forward (this seems like a legitimate solution for quite a few). OR artists could look to diversify their income stream.

Companies are popping up every day that help artists make more money than ever before.

If 1,000 "true fans" previously spent $100 a year on an artist through CD/download sales, concert tickets and t-shirts and earned the artist $100,000 a year, what if, with new models, artists could get their "die hard" fans to spend $500 a year on them? What if it was a sliding scale? 200 fans at $500, 300 fans at $250, 500 fans at $100? Instead of artists earning about $100,000 a year on 1,000 fans, they could earn $225,000.

It may not be that fans didn't want to spend more than $100 a year on their favorite artist, it's just that they didn't have any attractive options to do so.

Kickstarter, PledgeMusic, Indiegogo and Patreon have allowed artists to offer high priced rewards/exclusives to die hard fans. Patreon's model allows artists to monetize these fans on an ongoing basis. BandPage offers experiences enabling artists to monetize their most die hard fans in creative ways while on tour. BandCamp and Loudr allow fans to 'name your price' for lossless (or mp3) downloads. Fanswell allows artists to easily setup house concert tours to make the most money from a small, but dedicated fanbase.

Licensing companies are helping independent artists get high paying syncs on TV and in film and independent admin publishing companies like SongTrust, CD Baby and TuneCore are collecting royalties previously only available to those with publishing deals.
+CD Baby Pro vs. TuneCore Publishing (The Full Report) (Ari's Take)
YouTube is now offering a tip feature on channel pages and Spotify has integrated merch to artist profiles (without taking a cut).

We have to start embracing alternative monetization opportunities and accept that the traditional way that fans support artists is over.

We need a new mindset. It's a new era. People ARE valuing artists - but in the way that makes sense to them (not you). What's wrong with a 23 year old who loves a band paying $250 for a PledgeMusic exclusive, $5 per video released on Patreon, an $18 ticket for their concert, a $25 t-shirt and a backstage "experience" for $50, but never download an album or buy a CD? What's wrong with that?

The album gets the fan in the door. Gets her hooked. The album is only the introduction. No longer the end game. The album is the gateway. And the album is found on Spotify, YouTube or ThePirateBay with a couple clicks.

And major label artists never made much from album sales anyways.

They always had to rely on alternative sources of income (like touring and merch) to offset what their labels didn't pay them in royalties. Lyle Lovett admitted that after selling over 4.6 million records he has received $0 in record royalties from his label. But he's had a very successful career. Why are people silent when record companies (legally) steal from artists, but raise hell when fans do it?

"I've never made a dime from a record sale in the history of my record deal. I've been very happy with my sales, and certainly my audience has been very supportive. I make a living going out and playing shows." - Lyle Lovett

So, your options. You can either bitch about the "decline of the music industry", exclaim that fans aren't true fans if they don't pay for recorded music, OR you can get creative, embrace the new technologies that build on the artist-fan relationship, and lead the pack in this beautiful new world full of alternative revenue sources.

Your choice.
Ari Herstand is the author of How To Make It in the New Music Business, a Los Angeles based singer/songwriter and the creator of the music biz advice blog, Ari's Take. Follow him on Twitter: @aristake

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Fans Aren't Going To Pay For Music Anymore. And That's Ok.

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Just a few years ago it seemed like every artist was passing around articles chastising fans for illegally downloading music. How it hurts the bands. The producers. The session musicians. The labels (well no fan cares about them). The songwriters. And the industry as a whole.

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Component is a section of Aux.Out. for one-off pieces, special editorials, and lost orphans of the music discussion. Today, Catey Shaw delivers an op-ed about her experience with Spotify as an independent pop singer, and how that differs from that of Taylor Swift.
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The Internet is buzzing with the news of Taylor Swift's big move away from Spotify. Artists are firing up their torches and grabbing their pitchforks (lol) to slay the gnarling, evil dragon that is streaming. Now, as much as I love the idea of sticking-it-to-the-man and challenging the system and whatnot, I think I'm gonna stick with my boi, Spotify, on this one. Taylor's benefit from removing her music from Spotify is simple - she is making her product virtually unavailable for free, which will (in theory) cause more people to go pay for her albums, not to mention the press she's getting around her new release. I'll get to why that applies to virtually no one but her a little later, but I'm not here to talk about Taylor Swift. I'm here to talk about Spotify, and how it is a crucial tool in the development of my indie-pop career.

Streaming services, Spotify in-particular, are a completely different beast from iTunes and other online retailers. Spotify does one thing that many don't take into account (or don't take seriously enough), which is apply the social aspect of music to the listening process. Artists and listeners can create and share playlists with followers, connect with Twitter and Facebook, follow friends, and discover new music organically. As an indie artist, I'll jump at any opportunity to connect my name and music with fresh ears. Every time I upload something to Spotify, my followers get a notification. When they listen to it, their Facebook friends see my name and may very well give it a listen themselves. From there my songs have an opportunity to spread like wildfire, or at least a juicy rumor. In any case, those are listeners that I had no access to before. Every time someone adds me to a playlist, with millions of subscribers or just a few, it's an almost guaranteed play. Today it seems to be less about selling records and more about getting plays. With the obvious shift in the music business in mind, Spotify becomes a service that would be silly to brush aside.

Here's an example. One of my songs currently has 1,513,757 plays on Spotify. The plays just started rolling in one day, seemingly out-of-nowhere. After a few weeks of rapid increase in streams, I was told by a friend from high school that she heard it on a Spotify playlist called, Smart is the New Sexy. After that playlist, it popped up on a few more, and now, less than a year later, my song has well over a million plays. Over a year ago I played the song on daytime television and it aired nationally three times that day, which gave me a tiny sales spike and a handful of Facebook likes, but nothing significant. Since then I haven't really promoted the song at all. I don't even play it at my shows. It's from my first release, and the sound of it just doesn't really fit in with what I'm going for right now. My opinion on the song aside, it's now kicking ass with virtually no effort on my part. One playlist put that song in business for me.

So now I'm all about playlists and the sharing aspect of spotify. By being active on my account (creating and updating playlists), my name keeps popping up all of the time. And unlike Facebook, where the user is immersed in everything from kittens to misogyny to generating energy from vegetables, when my name pops up on Spotify, the person is already thinking about music. I started really utilizing Spotify in April of this year, at which time I had around 600 followers. Today that number is at 2,439. Now, I know that to a major recording artist that number isn't much. But for me, that means that the next time I release a song, all 2,439 of those humans will be notified. That's huge for me! When I shared The Brooklyn EP with my followers the whole EP was in my top 10 streamed songs by the next day, and remains. In August, I released the video for my song, "Human Contact", and it got a ton of plays in the first week via Reddit (around 200k). The plays on the video spiked and eventually slowed down, but the Spotify streams kept rising. I'd like to think that was because people fell in love with the song after seeing the video, but when the song was added to the Spotify-curated playlist New Music Tuesdays, the streams went up even more aggressively than Family ever had. Also featured on The Happy Hipster, Sunny Side Up, FEEL GOOD MUSIC and many other playlists, the song has over a million plays, less than three months after its release. Let me say again, I am lovin' this playlist thing.

Now I could go on all day about how great Spotify is for music discovery (for artists and listeners), but I know what everyone really wants to talk about is Taylor Swift and money. All of the reasons for loving Spotify I've stated above mean nothing to an artist like Taylor Swift. People hear her music without trying. Discovery isn't an issue there. Her music (and face) is everywhere- radio, advertisements, movies, news outlets, blogs on blogs on blogs. Right here! I'm sitting here writing this and you probably clicked on it because of Taylor Swift. Girl does not need any help getting her name out there. But, I maintain that Spotify can still be a useful tool for even the biggest stars, even if snubbing it won't hurt them. There's no denying that radio is still the titan- everyone listens to it (obvi) and it's curated, so no one has to worry about if what they're listening to is good or cool - they know it is because it's on the radio. No searching for new music or scanning blogs and record stores. Just turn it on and there you have it: a hit song ready for your ears. But with more and more people getting sick of hearing the same five or six songs all day, virtually every car being produced with streaming capability, and iPhones essentially glued in people's hands, I see Spotify playlists becoming something of a powerhouse for curated music. I'm not gonna get ahead of myself and say that Spotify playlists could out-do the radio, but I'm not gonna say they couldn't.

The fact of the matter is it doesn't make any sense to snub Spotify while releasing through other digital retailers, because the revenue sharing is on the exact same scale. Thirty percent goes to the service, 60% to the owners of the master, and 10% to publishing. Whether or not that is fair is a different discussion, but these are pretty set, standard rates. If Spotify pays 0.005 dollars per stream, it takes roughly 200 plays to match the 1 dollar my song cost on iTunes. When you think about how many times you listen to songs that you love, over time, 200 plays isn't really that hard to reach. Say a person listens to an album 1000 times. That's buying the album five times. HypeBot published a great article about this where they compared this idea to that of buying vs. renting.

So why is everyone so up in arms? Change is hard, I know. Selling records made piles of money for a good amount of people in the glory days, but things done changed. Our amazing ex-boyfriend that didn't quite pan out is now engaged. And we can stay in denial that he'll leave her and come back to us, but we all know the chances of that happening are slim-to-none. We've got to get over it. The music industry very clearly isn't what it used to be. People don't see music as something you can buy or own. They treat music like air - absolutely vital, and basically free. And yes, you could suffocate people until they pay up, but that could get messy. Spotify and other streaming services are offering us the opportunity to be a part of this shift, rather than victims of it. To really make a living in this you've got to be a businessperson as much as an artist. Record sales alone wouldn't be enough even if people were buying records. You've got to tour, sell merch, market yourself.

To independent artists it doesn't matter what Taylor Swift does on her Spotify account. As far as I'm concerned, she's just freeing up some space on the top playlists for the little guys. To spend more of our time trying to push people back to buying records is an exercise in futility. The smart ones will find a different way. Spotify could be that way, and if it isn't, it can definitely help transition us into a world where streaming is key, and CDs are just plastic circles.

~

Catey Shaw is a Brooklyn-based indie-pop artist. Her sophomore release The Brooklyn EP, featuring "Human Contact," is out now. She is on Spotify, Twitter, and Facebook.

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I'm a Pop Singer and Spotify Works for Me

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Component is a section of Aux.Out. for one-off pieces, special editorials, and lost orphans of the music discussion. Today, Catey Shaw delivers an op-ed about her experience with Spotify as an independent pop singer, and how that differs from that of Taylor Swift.

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12 things you should never say to a musician.

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12 things you should never say to a musician.

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1. So Are You Trying To Be A Musician

I am a musician. Not trying. Trying to be a musician is watching the first YouTube video on how to hold a guitar. Not what I have done for the past 15 years. That is BEING a musician.

2. You Sound Like...

I know you're trying to be nice by putting me in good company, but musicians want to feel original. We don't want to hear we sound like everyone else. That we're unoriginal. It's fine for you to sell your friends on listening to someone new by comparing them to well known artists, but when talking to a musician, the best compliment is "you sound like YOU and it's awesome." Unless you're talking to a pop producer, then yeah, "it sounds like Katy Perry" is probably the best compliment you could give.

3. You Should Try Out For American Idol

I will slap you.

4. When Am I Going To Hear You On The Radio?

When your radio plays better shit.

5. You Should Be On The Voice

Because that's a career builder. Right Jermaine?

6. You Must Love Karaoke

No, actually, I hate karaoke because I have to listen to you sing.

7. Can I Get On The List? Plus 1?

You don't have $10 to support my music, but you have $50 for the round of shots you just bought everyone?

8. What's Your Real Job?

It's this little field called music. It's way more real than those TPS reports you put together for the Bobs.

9. What's Your Backup Plan

What's yours?

10. It Will Be Great Exposure

Meaning, it doesn't pay. No thanks.

11. I Have A Great Idea For A Song

And I have a great idea on how you can fix my faucet better. But let's keep these things to ourselves.

12. Free Bird

That stopped being funny in '97.
Ari Herstand is the author of How To Make It in the New Music Business, a Los Angeles based singer/songwriter and the creator of the music biz advice blog Ari's Take. Follow him on Twitter: @aristake Photo is by Robert Dalton on Flickr used with the Creative Commons License

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12 Things You Should Never Say To a Musician | Digital Music News

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I am a musician. Not trying. Trying to be a musician is watching the first YouTube video on how to hold a guitar. Not what I have done for the past 15 years. That is BEING a musician. I know you're trying to be nice by putting me in good company, but musicians want to feel original.