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Christopher Pizza rocks!

April 17, 2008 By Christopher Joel View Comments

You walk into this joint and the first thing you notice is how skinny it is.  In fact, the stage is just big enough for me to stand with a boom mic and maybe take one step backwards before banging into their cool retro sign.  In front of the stage, there’s a tiny walk way and a two-seater table.  That’s the width of the whole place.

The second thing you notice is the vibe.  It’s got that ultra cool, retro vibe going.  The kind that everyone wants for their place, but might not be able to pull off.

The third we noticed was how ridiculously early we were.  I read their site wrong and thought the show started at 8.  It started at 9.  We got there at 6:45.  Yeah.  The pizza was excellent, but everyone wasn’t happy about having to wait an extra hour longer than expected.

Perrin Lamb was still dealing with “the crud” so he played first and was only able to do 5 songs.  Even sick, he was amazing!  Apparently, he’s been featured on Kyle XY and has a new album coming out in May.  Should be good stuff.

We played after him and did 6 songs:

  • So Easily
  • Not This Time
  • 11:11
  • Don’t Leave Me Sunshine
  • About Last Night
  • Fantasy World

It was a different kind of place to play, because the audience was either to my left or my right, not straight ahead, which was the wall.  They had another room speaker right in front of me, which acted as a monitor.  I guess sitting around drinking sweet tea jacked with my throat because I had some pitch issues, but over all it was a fun gig.  Having Paul on perc helped a ton and gave tons more texture to each song.  I’d love to play there again.  They have a house drum kit and a Rhodes too.  It would be fun to have the whole group there and bust out that stuff and rock out.  Then again, it’d also be fun to play solo too.  It’s just fun to play.

Filed Under: Set List, Shows Tagged With: , , , ,

Amazon sells more albums than iTunes

April 16, 2008 By Christopher Joel View Comments

According to Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, Amazon MP3 sells more albums than iTunes does.  Currently iTunes sells 2/3 of it’s music as singles and 1/3 as albums.  Amazon is the opposite with 2/3 as albums and 1/3 as singles.  While that ratio probably thrills the hearts of record execs everywhere, it really doesn’t mean much for overall music sales.  Amazon sells considerably less than iTunes, so these are still probably not huge numbers, but it shows the record industry that they aren’t solely dependent on iTunes to sell their wares, which is good for us artists and is good for music fans as well.  The more places we have to choose from, the better.

Filed Under: Music Business News Tagged With: , ,

What a weekend!

April 14, 2008 By Christopher Joel View Comments

It was a long weekend! I was fortunate to lead worship at church this weekend, plus I had a show Saturday night, opening for John Michael at Cafe Coco.

Worship went really well. I played electric on two songs (yea!), then acoustic on two songs. I led a song by Leeland called “Yes, You Have”, which was a blast and since they had played it last week, people sang along and got into it. We opened the service with my newest song, “Don’t Leave Me, Sunshine”. Everyone seemed to love how happy it was and brightened an otherwise dreary day. I talked to quite a few people who said they were trying to figure what artist did that song and they could have sworn they heard it on the radio somewhere. Soon, my friends…soon! It was a little nerve-wracking to play it so soon after writing it, since I haven’t really had a chance to polish the sound yet, but it went well. Lionel had some great ideas with glockenspiels and trumpets and who knows what else. Think Sgt. Pepper’s. :)

Mike got to debut his new worship song, “You Are All I Need” and it went really well! I’ve had it stuck in my head all week long. I played electric and got to do the solo.

The Cafe Coco show went well. I wasn’t expecting a big turn out, but some unexpected people showed up (Thanks Hayes family!) and really made my night. It’s always fun when you see people you never would’ve thought would come. Mike and I played 7 songs:

  • So Easily
  • Not This Time
  • 11:11
  • Don’t Leave Me, Sunshine
  • About Last Night
  • Fantasy World
  • So Easily (encore)

We weren’t going to play “About Last Night”, but it felt like the whole set was flying through, so we threw it in. At the end, John Michael asked me to play one more song, so we repeated “So Easily” by crowd request. By crowd, I mean Anna, my wife. I would have played something else, something new, but I’m a bum and haven’t rehearsed any of the newer stuff (it’s coming!), so we just repeated the first song. It worked out nicely, since half our audience came in during the set, so they got to hear almost all of it that way.

Next up: Christopher Pizza. I’m really looking forward to this show, it should be fun, and it’s at Christopher Pizza! See you there.

Filed Under: Set List, Shows Tagged With: , , , , ,

Downloads are coming…

April 11, 2008 By Christopher Joel View Comments

cNet is running an article about an EMI label, Caroline Records, that brings foreign music stars to the US.  They are starting a new trend with promo though, instead of sending out thousands of CDs (and causing issues like my other post), they allow the reviewers access to a secure website where they can listen to the songs.  The coolest part is they don’t print up any CD’s until the download demand is high enough.

So a major label is dumping the disc in favor of downloads, at least, until the artist has enough demand to warrant a disc.  It’s easy to see that soon, they won’t even print up a disc because they realize it’s easier to just leave it all digital and they can make more money that way.  Now if they would just do away with DRM altogether…

Filed Under: Music Business News Tagged With: , , , , ,

Universal suing over promo CDs

April 11, 2008 By Christopher Joel View Comments

Universal gives out a promo disc to a reviewer.  That reviewer, at some point, dumps the disc at a local record store.  Troy Augusto, of Roastbeast Music Collectibles, buys them up and sells them as collectibles on eBay.  Universal thinks this infringes on their right of distribution.  The law called “First Sale” is pretty clear, Universal gave the discs to a reviewer, disc jockey, etc, which means that disc is now the property of the person, not Universal.  The same would be true if the someone went to a store and purchased the disc.  That new owner can do what they like with it, including give it to a friend, keep it forever, sell to a used CD store, or throw it away.  Universal contends that their sticker that says “not for resale” constitutes a contract and therefore cannot be resold, as per the sticker’s “agreement”.

Thankfully, the EFF is taking Universal to court over the matter, since Universal is suing Troy and I believe they will win without even having a court date.  This business just gets more and more ridiculous by the day.  I’m just waiting until they try to license my head’s radio station, especially when I get some song stuck in there and they demand thousands of dollars because it player 8,000 times in one day.

Filed Under: Music Business News Tagged With: , , , ,

The evolution of album art

April 8, 2008 By Christopher Joel View Comments

Wired is running an interesting article about how album art is changing.  A quick summary: vinyl offered more space, but digital offers more function.  Digital graphic artists are now recognizing that with the transition to digital music, comes digital artwork as well, which doesn’t have to only be a static picture.  Since it’s all digital, it could be a video, a widget, or any other form of digital artwork. It’s fun to watch things change right in front of us.  I can’t wait to try out new formats and see what the limits of album artwork really can be.

Filed Under: Music Business News, Thoughts on Music Tagged With: , , , , ,

Acoustic show at Christopher Pizza!

April 7, 2008 By Christopher Joel View Comments

Music Society Nashville has invited me to play Wednesday, April 16th at 8 pm. This is their regular night at Christopher Pizza and I’m looking forward to playing there!

Come on out, grab a pizza, and enjoy the show. There’s no cover charge, but I would recommend supporting Christopher Pizza by buying something, even if it’s just dessert.  Check the shows page for a map and other details about the show.  Hope to see you there.

Filed Under: Band News, Shows Tagged With: , , , ,

Universal uses eco-friendly CD packaging

April 5, 2008 By Christopher Joel View Comments

I read this story this week and kinda shrugged about it. So what? Then I got a copy of Apple’s Leopard and discovered it had this very same packaging. Apple’s discs normally come in a CD sleeve, which I then remove from the box, label, and stick in a file folder for that computer. This packaging was built right into the box, so it presented a small challenge. Small, since I just cut the CD holder part away from the box and viola, problem solved. I do really like the new packaging though. It’s just efficient enough to hold the CD in, yet allow me to easily pull it back out, without any broken plastic tines or cracked cases, and its only slightly thicker than a sleeve (good for filing).

I read the story on hypebot and I opened it up again today to post the link (above). Overall, while it’s great that Universal is moving to an eco-friendly packaging, I fully agree with a commenter on the hypebot article. If Universal was truly interested in “being green”, they’d do away with additional CDs and only offer digital downloads, which are the greenest form of music distribution anyway. However, since some people have to have a physical copy, this at least presents a convince-the-suburbanites-we’re-eco-friendly way of packaging a disc. It could have actually helped if they had made this move ten years ago though. Either way, if I ever print a physical CD, I’ll check into using this packaging too.

Filed Under: Music Business News Tagged With: , , , , , ,

iTunes is #1

April 3, 2008 By Christopher Joel

iTunes has passed Walmart to become the biggest distributor of music, period. It’s the number one digital distributor and the number one overall distributor. Big stuff.

iTunes accounts for 19% of all the music sold today, compared to Walmart’s 15%. The next closest digital distributor is Rhapsody, with 1% (although Amazon is at 6%, but that’s a combination of digital and physical CD sales). Digital downloads, in general, account for 30% of all music sold.

Interesting and telling stat: 48% of teenagers didn’t buy a single CD last year. I think that’s only going to increase and digital sales will become one of the only ways to buy music (unless you buy a CD/memory stick/some-new-format directly from the band at a show).

I think the next thing will be artists selling download cards at shows instead of discs. I’ve been toying with the idea myself. It just seems to make so much more sense, ya know? The fan buys the card for the same amount as a CD or an album download, they go home, load up iTunes/Amazon/artist’s site/wherever and put in their claim code. They can then download the album, maybe in their choice of formats – depending on the site, and load it wherever they please. CDs are bulky, take up more space than the download cards, they break easily, and then are only used to rip MP3s into a computer and are now a pain for the fan to store. So skip a step and sell them a download in person. Autograph the card and the fan has a cool keepsake.

Filed Under: Music Business News Tagged With: , , , ,

Mariah passes Elvis

April 2, 2008 By Christopher Joel View Comments

Mariah Carey has passed Elvis’ record for #1 hits.  She has 18, he had 17.  Now she is second only to The Beatles, who had 20.  Scary stuff.  Hopefully, she doesn’t ever pass The Beatles.  How sad would that day be, huh?

Filed Under: Music Business News Tagged With: , , , ,
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