BigRedX

Vampire Weekend. Not vampires or even the slightest bit Goth. In fact some of the most insipid ska I have had the misfortune to have to listen to. There used to be a Nottingham band called Hot Japanese Girl, composed of three beardy white blokes, so none of them were Hot, Japanese or Girls.

If we all felt so strongly about how terrible Spotify are (and remember that Spotify are only bad at paying musicians because their record companies sold the streaming rights for a relatively small amount and keep the lion's share of this money for themselves) then we could vote with our wallets and cancel our premium subscriptions. But we don't.

Ignoring the fact that gigging currently isn't possible, if one of my bands was popular enough to be getting a million streams in a year, then we'd probably also be selling more than enough physical product and downloads to be close to making enough to completely finance all the band's activities and turn a profit. Certainly IMO the revenue made from streaming has always a tiny proportion of any band's overall income. I've always looked on it as nice little extra bonus.

There's an extensive thread about stand-alone drum machine and DAW plug-ins here.

If you look more closely he's only worth that much because the Spotify share offer and the fact that gullible investors have gone out and bought them, despite the fact that Spotify have still not managed to show how to make a profit running a streaming service, even at the bargain basement rates that the record labels have agreed upon with them. It's all "Emperor's New Clothes" and at some point the investors will realise that and pull the plug.

Another update... According to the Interparcel tracking the parcel is still in Belgian Customs awaiting clearing. The person to whom I am sending this parcel has heard nothing so far, so it's not being held up because they haven't paid VAT and/or Import Duty, although. According to the Belgian Post Office web site the customs delays are 20-24 days. The 24 day deadline expired last Friday. I got in touch with Interparcel and they promised to escalate the enquiry and I would receive a reply with 72 hours. That deadline expired at CoP on Wednesday. Further conversations with Interparcel revealed that they still haven't heard anything and are apparently chasing it up again. It will be Monday at the earliest before I hear anything, at which point the parcel will have been in transit for 6 weeks. If Interparcel can't give me an update by then I am going to push for the parcel to be declared lost and get my insurance.

But they are tat. No-one back in the 70s bought these instruments because they really wanted this particular guitar or bass. They bought them because they were all they could afford, and if the terrible quality and lack of playability didn't put them off playing for life, they were unceremoniously dumped as soon as they could afford something better.

This is the sort of mis-information put out by CD Baby and other Aggregator services who are based in the US and aim their advice mainly at US based artists where the rules on getting royalties (especially for publishing are different). What you need first and foremost is ISRC codes which in the UK you can get yourself for FREE simply by registering your "record label" with the PPL. That gets you a unique record label identifier code and then ability to generate as many ISRCs as you need forever. It's the ISRCs that are used by the PRS to identify tracks for performance royalties. The UPC/EAN codes are part of the service the Aggregators provide, and IIRC are a tiny percentage of the admin fee for getting your music on the streaming and download services. Also if you are a UK-based artist you don't need any of the Aggregators' "publishing services" because what they offer is entirely covered by PRS membership, and they don't actually do any proper "publishing" - i.e. services that songwriters would expect for someone taking a percentage of their performance royalties such as promoting the songs for use in TV and film production, or trying to get other artists to cover them. In fact before the rise of using "rock" music (in all it's various sub genres) as the sound track for films and TV programmes I would have said their was very little point in any non-mainstream artist having a publishing deal as they were unlikely to get any benefits but simply lose a fair percentage of their income. Also if other people have uploaded your music to YouTube you can find and register these with the PRS and claim the royalties. One of the bands I'm in does quite nicely out of this arrangement.

How do you know that they're not just another group of Japanese Visual Kei pretty boys? Have a look at some "Malice Mizer" and "Versailles" videos if you don't believe me.

The problem is not Spotify. It's the fact that the record labels take a massive proportion of the royalties that a Spotify play produces, and they sold the streaming rights for (relatively) next to nothing. Looking at what my songs earn from a Spotify play, if I had 1,000,000 streams I'd be doing quite nicely. Not enough to give up the day job, but certainly enough to finance the next round of recordings and videos for one of my bands - in other words a great deal more than £33. That's because I haven't signed a crap deal with a rip-off record company. On the other hand I don't have a 1,000,000 streams because very few people have heard of either of the bands I play with, so if a record label came along and could guarantee getting my music the sort of publicity that would generate millions of streams I might at least take a second look at that deal. The other problem is that streaming doesn't really pay anyone. None of the major players actually make any money off providing streaming services, even when they are paying peanuts for the privilege. They are either being propped up by the profitable parts of their parent companies, or gullible investors who still haven't seen any return on what they have put in. SoundCloud did manage to turn a profit for a while but that's because they weren't paying any royalties at all! Since that was discovered they have been in financial difficulties.

I used to be a Freur/Underworld obsessive and bought everything they released in every format. This was partly spurred on by the discovery that for the some the albums the CD versions of some of the songs were different to those on the vinyl versions. Since everything has now been put into my iTunes library, I've rationalised the collection and removed all those songs that are exact duplicates.

As well as being low in volume, does the signal from the turntable also sound weak in the bass and boosted in the treble content?

Not really cheap as: 1. Its still got a day or so to go and as everyone knows all the serious bidding on eBay happens in the last 10 seconds of an auction. If it was £199 Buy It Now then it could be considered cheap. However... 2. It's not in original condition. That pickup swap is particularly ugly, and there's replacement no-brand machine heads. 3. The action looks scarily high and it looks as though there might be neck bow issues (unless that's just crap photography). The only thing it has in its favour for keeping the price low is it's collection only.

Which part of the electronics does the board in question cover? If it is the Wal part then get in touch with Paul Herman at Wal. The MIDI part was designed by Steve Chick who now runs Industrial Radio and should be able to help you with that.

Any mid-scoop is all to do with the position of the pickups. Change their positions either in relation to the length of the strings or the distance they are apart or both, and you will alter the scoop frequency and/or the amount of scoop. You may even find an arrangement where there is a mid-boost. The only way that active electronic can help is if the centre frequency of the mids control corresponds with the centre frequency of the scoop cause by the pickup positioning. Then you can boost that part of the signal to compensate. Or you could wire them in series which will change it yet again.

And finally (I really do think that's it unless HJ has any specific questions that I haven't addressed), when you get your tracks mastered make sure that they are optimised for cutting to vinyl. There are certain things that are perfectly acceptable for digital reproduction that will render your record either uncuttable and/or unplayable. Things to watch out for a extreme low frequency boost and anything involving phase differences across the stereo field - vinyl being a mechanical playback medium absolutely hates phase changes that occur across the stereo field. A quick and dirty check for stereo phase problems (although it won't pick up everything that will be problematic for vinyl reproduction) is to play back your recordings in mono. If any effects or instruments either disappear or become significantly louder when you do this then there is a stereo phase problem. It is better to catch as many of these as possible before you have the tracks mastered as there is nothing worse than being told by the mastering engineer that you need to have stuff remixed because the current versions aren't capable of being cut to vinyl. Also you should have separate masters made for your digital versions - i.e. for submitting to your Aggregator for iTMS, Spotify etc. as well as for making promo CDs if you need these. Ideally get them "Mastered For iTunes" which should compensate as far as possible for changes to the mix caused by lossy compression used for downloads and streaming. Any mastering service that tells you you can use the same masters for both digital and vinyl isn't worth bothering with and you should look elsewhere.

I'm also in the audience on some of the Fra-Foa live DVD. They happened to be on tour while I was on holiday in Japan and myself and my travelling companions went to the the Kyoto gig. An all-round very bizarre experience. 1. Even though this was a small gig by an indie Japanese band, it was possible to buy tickets for it from the Lawson 24 hour shop through their nation-wide ticket purchase system. 2. On arrival at the venue, it appeared to be a "barn" at the back of a parking lot somewhere close to the main shopping area of Kyoto. 3. The tickets were numbered but there were no seats, so entry was done according to ticket number. If you had a low numbered ticket you could stand at the front. The higher your ticket number the later you were let in and therefore the further back you were. Our tickets were in the low 200s and we were about the last to be let in. However once the band came on all the politeness went out of the widow and we were able to get much closer to the front. 4. You were given a bottle of beer on entry, probably because there was no bar and therefore a way of letting the audience have a drink and not upset any local licensing laws. One of my companions tried to get a second bottle mid-way through the gig, which cause no end of confusion among the organisers!

I'm actually performing on a Kraftwerk bootleg CD (IIRC it's called "Computers In Love"). It's made up of recordings from their 1981 tour including the one I attended at Rock City in Nottingham. For the second encore "Pocket Calculator" the band came down to the front of the stage playing various portable devices, and after the line "By pressing down a special key, It plays a little melody" they held out one the keyboards to the audience to allow them to press the keys. Being down the front and in the right place at the right time, one of these tunes is being played by me.

One other thing I forgot to mention. You will need some form of digital version to go with a vinyl-only release. Either a CD included in the packaging or a link to free download. You'll find that very few people actually play the records they buy but simply add the digital version to their computer or phone. These days the free download is the way to go. If you sell your record through Bandcamp they will give you 200 download codes for free and you can buy more at starting at 100 codes for $3. Edit: and get your EP on all the streaming and download services using an Aggregator. Some take a very low percentage of your sales and streaming income but require you to pay a yearly subscription in order to keep your music available on line. Others charge a one-off fee for your music to be available for ever but also take a higher proportion of any income generated. Have a look at what the various services charge and pick the one that you think will shut your band the best. I have music available on-line through CD Baby, Catapult and Distrokid. However unless you have a video that goes viral to go with the release don't expect to make much money from on-line sales. Ultimately The Terrortones made less than 5% of the total sales value of our music from on-line (both physical mail order and streaming/downloads). The other 95% came from selling actual records and CDs at gigs (remember them?). In fact none of my music available for download/streaming has yet recouped it's initial Aggregator set-up fees. However as a promotional tool it is pretty much required.

I had both, but always preferred Blow Your Face Out.

The Terrortones had our SpiderQueen EP pressed through Media Hut and the SnakeOil For Snakes Album by Mobineko, and unless they have changed the cutting and pressing plants they use to rubbish ones since we had ours done I can recommend either. The reality of the record manufacturing process these days is that very few of the brokers advertising vinyl production actually do their own pressing and nearly all of it is sub-contracted out to pressing plants in Europe (Czech Republic and France in our cases). However given Brexit and the various customs delays and additional charges associated with it this may no longer be the situation. Certainly before the beginning of 2021 all the UK pressing plants were vastly more expensive than the places we used. That may not longer be the case. From an actual production PoV there are a couple of things to be aware of. There is a trade-off between audio quality and running time on vinyl and also the closer you get to the label on a record the lower the quality of the audio. IIRC the recommendations we got for our pressing were not to exceed 4 minutes per side for 7" and 12 minutes for 12" (both at 45rpm) if we wanted the best quality audio signal on our records. In practice one side of our 7" EP was 5' 30" and each side of the album was 18 minutes and the audio hasn't suffered significantly within the limitations of the medium. Don't bother with the extra expense of "heavy-weight" pressings, it's for vinyl snobs only. Besides compared with the typical records of the late 70s and 80s the current standard of 120 gram vinyl is already a massive improvement. The big problem you will have with producing vinyl as opposed to CDs is how long it takes. SpiderQueen took just over 4 weeks from submitting the audio and sleeve artwork to receiving our records, but by the time we did the album that had increased to 12 weeks turn-around. There are places offering quicker lead times , but all charge a premium. Also if your are looking at getting your record produced anytime during the run up to "Record Shop Day" forget it. The pressing plants are all booked solid with limited edition releases form the major record labels and one-off pressings won't get a look in. When it comes to packaging you absolutely need to have a well-designed and eye-catching sleeve. This is one of things that you use to persuade people to buy the physical product rather than just stream it or get a digital download. These days short run printing is cheap, so there's no excise for not having a picture sleeve for your record so you don't have to act like the Desperate Bicycles when it comes to producing your record. Most definitely the days of ordering records in just plain paper sleeves and then wrapping them in a photocopied sheet are long over (unless you are specifically trying to recreate that late 70s DIY vibe). If you can do/afford something more than just an ordinary printed picture sleeve, that will help your record to stand out - The Terrortones had an 8-page comic with SpiderQueen and SnakeOil For Snakes comes in a clear plastic cover with the band and album name printed on it and then with 5 double-sided insert sheets to give a variety of alternative front covers depending on your mood. While you don't need a graphic designer to do your sleeve design it is worth showing the final artwork to someone who is a packaging design professional to make sure that you don't get any unpleasant surprises when your design is printed. Don't put any cover versions on the record, you'll need to pay for a MCPS licence before you can get the records pressed for any if you do, and get all the songwriters of the tracks on the record to join the PRS. Any more questions just ask away.

In the days before "Greatest Hits" or "The Best Of" became more commonplace the live album was often the only source of all of a band's best songs collected together in one place, and very often performed with a bit more "verve" than the studio recordings. And being composed of two or more discs were often better value for money. Having had another look through my iTunes library and there are lot of live albums that I owned in my early days of record buying that I had forgotten about because they don't get a massive amount of plays these days, but would have been staples of my listening when I was in my teens. So as well as the two I mentioned in my original post I would also have to submit the following: Runaways Live In Japan Steppenwolf Live Yessongs Blow Your Face Out by The J Geils Band Frampton Come Alive (of course) However it did occur to me that two of my most listened two live recordings have AFAIK never been officially released, and have exited for me on cassette only. Firstly The Baker Gurvitz Army recorded off the TV around the time of the release of their first album, and secondly Freur from a Radio One "In Concert" broadcast from early 1986 IIRC which featured songs from their yet to be released (and when it was almost impossible to get hold of) second album.

You are aware that it's a short scale bass? Not everyone gets on with less than 34" scale.

Also on Fender basses the maple board is part of the neck whilst the rosewood board is obviously a completely separate piece glued on.

A lot of them included Elton John in the band playing the songs. It was to get around the licensing requirements and the fact that some record labels and artists (where they had enough control over how their music was used) didn't want their recordings appearing elsewhere - remember these were in the days when the record was the product. The producers of these albums would still have to pay the MCPS fees in the same way that a band putting a cover version on their album would, but these would have been a fraction of the costs of licensing the recordings by the original artists. It wasn't until first of all Arcade and K-Tel started doing compilations with the original recordings and then in the 80s the "Now" series - although those were very much biased towards artists that were signed to EMI (IIRC) who produced the Now albums.