New Michael Hutchence music, documentary about INXS singer's last days being Released
First of all thanks to Danielle McGrane for this article.
Previously unreleased songs recorded by Michael Hutchence and a documentary on the last years of his life are set to be released over the next year.
Sydney entrepreneur Ron Creepy, who runs Kings Cross studio and venue The X Studio, told AAP he has spent the last two years working on the project alongside LA-based record producer Danny Saber.
"I heard some time ago about some unreleased music that was sitting out there and then I approached (Hutchence's) trust directly," Creevey says.
A total of 15 songs will be released.
Lead singer of INXS, Michael Hutchence (centre), in the early years. Photo: domain.com.au
"At least five songs are brilliant," he said. "There's going to be two duets that will come out with two very big artists that I can't legally name at the moment and then there's singles he did himself."
Saber, a producer on Hutchence's self-titled solo album released in 1999, says he and Hutchence had been working on music together not long before he died.
"Me and him sort of connected and started writing towards the end. It's sort of like a little treasure trove of stuff – essentially there were vocals and ideas and that's the stuff that I'm reworking and we're going to be releasing," Saber told AAP.
Creevey has also been gathering artefacts and documents belonging to Hutchence to build up a picture of the final years of his life.
Kylie Minogue and Michael Hutchence when they were dating. Photo: Supplied
Along with diaries and notes of Hutchence's, Creevey says he also developed film in a disposable camera the singer used not long before he died.
All of this will be used in a documentary that Creevey plans to release next year, to mark the 20th anniversary since Hutchence's death.
When news first surfaced in May of a potential Hutchence release, INXS manager, Chris `CM' Murphy, threatened legal action against anyone who released anything under the INXS and Hutchence copyright.
"I do know every single individual and or company who interfere with INXS/Michael copyrights are about to find themselves in very deep legal trouble," he wrote in an email to AAP.
Creevey denies that Murphy has any claim over the new music.
The first song is set for release before Christmas, close to Hutchence's 19th anniversary in November.
The documentary is due for release next year with the rest of the music to be released in the run up to Hutchence's 20th anniversary.
The results of a multiple regression analysis of 49 metropolitan areas show that the greater the airtime devoted to country music, the greater the white suicide rate.
Music is so powerful it’s even possible to become addicted to music.
Blood pressure readings revealed that listening to pop or jazz music had the same restorative effect as total silence. In contrast, those who listened to Pachelbel and Vivaldi relaxed much more quickly, and so their blood pressure dropped back to the normal level in far less time.
What Tamir and her colleagues found was that people preferred to listen to the angry music before playing Soldier of Fortune. Faced with a task in which anger might serve a useful function, facilitating the shooting of enemies, participants opted for an anger boost. What’s more, listening to the angry music actually improved performance…
Preferred music was found to significantly increase tolerance and perceived control over the painful stimulus and to decrease anxiety compared with both the visual distraction and silence conditions.
(More research based tricks for reducing pain here.)
What’s the best thing to have on your iPod at the gym?
The weight room is no place to try new genres. Playing your favorites can boost performance:
The performance under Preferred Music (9.8 +/- 4.6 km) was greater than under Nonpreferred Music (7.1 +/- 3.5 km) conditions. Therefore, listening to Preferred Music during continuous cycling exercise at high intensity can increase the exercise distance, and individuals listening to Nonpreferred Music can perceive more discomfort caused by the exercise.
Want to get the interest of that special someone? Put on the romantic music.
Women were more likely to give their number to men afterhearing love songs:
…the male confederate asked the participant for her phone number. It was found that women previously exposed to romantic lyrics complied with the request more readily than women exposed to the neutral ones.
(More on how science can make you a better kisser here.)
6) Music Can Save A Life
Do you know the proper way to give CPR chest compressions? Turns out timing is key.
And how can you best remember that timing during an emergency?
…Dr. John Hafner of the University of Illinois College of Medicine in Peoria had 15 physicians and med students perform the 100-compression procedure (on mannequins) while listening to the Bee Gees classic “Stayin’ Alive.” As Hafner reports in the Journal of Emergency Medicine, their mean compression rate was an excellent 109.1. Five weeks later, they repeated the exercise while singing the song to themselves as a “musical memory aid.” Their mean rate increased to 113.2. The medical professionals reported that the “mental metronome” improved both “their technical ability and confidence in providing CPR.”
7) Music Can Improve Your Work — Sometimes
Does music at the office make you work better or just distract you? It’s a much debated issue and the answer is not black and white.
…a comparison of studies that examined background music compared to no music indicates that background music disturbs the reading process, has some small detrimental effects on memory, but has a positive impact on emotional reactions…
Noise exerted a positive effect on cognitive performance for the ADHD group and deteriorated performance for the control group, indicating that ADHD subjects need more noise than controls for optimal cognitive performance.
Within 15 minutes of hearing the lecture, all the students took a multiple-choice quiz featuring questions based on the lecture material. The results: the students who heard the music-enhanced lecture scored significantly higher on the quiz than those who heard the music-free version.
(More on the most powerful way to easily get smarter here.)
9) Music Can Make You A Better Person
Need to soften someone’s heart? Maybe even your own?
In a year-long program focused on group music-making, 8- to 11-year old children became markedly more compassionate, according to a just-published study from the University of Cambridge. The finding suggests kids who make music together aren’t just having fun: they’re absorbing a key component of emotional intelligence.
Venezuela made music lessons mandatory. What happened? Crime went down and fewer kids dropped out of school:
A simple cost-benefit framework is used to estimate substantive social benefits associated with a universal music training program in Venezuela (B/C ratio of 1.68). Those social benefits accrue from both reduced school drop-out and declining community victimization. This evidence of important social benefits adds to the abundant evidence of individual gains reported by the developmental psychology literature.
As a working indie musician, you’re frequently on the go. But even when you aren’t gigging and maybe enjoying some down time, you’re never really off the clock, because you never know who you’re going to run into. When you work for yourself doing what you love it means you should always be prepared to switch into networking mode at any time, be it in an airport lounge Bangkok, or hanging out in a club down the street. There are some things you should never leave home without.
An over-the-shoulder bag You’ll need a comfortable, nice bag to sling over your shoulder, in order to carry all the things listed below. Business cards These aren’t to give out to fans but to exchange with music biz people that you’re networking with for gigs, etc. When someone hands you a business card, you should be able to hand yours back. It’s proper etiquette. The cards should have your full contact info, including a mailing address and a website. Vistaprint.com is a good website for picking designs and ordering affordable, decent-looking business cards.
Promo cards These are postcard-sized fliers to hand out to fans. Don’t put your phone number or a street address on these, just a promo pic, your website and social networking sites, along with any upcoming releases and/or gigs.
Press kit When you run into a member of the press, a radio personality or promoter who may be interested in your act, you should have a press kit handy in your bag. You can just hand it off (ask permission first) instead of mailing it. If all you have is an electronic press kit (EPK), include a link to it on your business card. Or, ask for an email address to email them your EPK.
Thumb drives It’s becoming more common for acts to put press kits and mp3s on thumbnail drives. These should be given to industry professionals, not the general public.
CDs Always keep a handful of your CDs on hand to give out to industry folks, sell to fans or drop off for consignment sales should you happen upon a cool, indie-friendly record store.
Earphones You’re a musician, so you should always be checking out new music wherever you go. Having a good pair of earphones allows you to be polite and keep the music to yourself in public spaces and cramped quarters with others, such as in an airplane cabin.
A smartphone If your phone is smart, it makes your professional life a lot easier. Having access to the world of apps, the internet and other features when you’re on the road is immensely helpful to musicians. For example, let’s say you’re onstage, the electronic tuner dies and you can’t tune by ear. There’s an app for that. In fact, there are many tuning apps for that.
A pen and notepad Because sometimes your smartphone dies and you need to write something important down without powering something else up.
An extra cord/cable/guitar picks It could be a power cord for a keyboard or a guitar cable. Or picks. These are things that often go bad or get lost and can easily fit in a knapsack.
Now, you’re ready to leave the house. But don’t forget your instrument!
Your Band Can Raise $20,000 On Kickstarter with These Two Easy Steps
The headline is true, if you are willing to pay the price and don’t have professional standards.
If you’re the type who likes to drive a brand new Audi so people think you’re cool but you can barely make the minimum payment on your school loans every month, this proven tactic for raising $20,000 on Kickstarter is TOTALLY for you.
Brought to you by Swimming With Bears from the middle of Texas.
STEP ONE: Raise $5,000 through your existing Circle of Influence
You might question whether this is possible for bands with no mailing list and little to no following.
We’ve seen time and time again that raising$5,000 is within reach for most bands and solo artists.
I am not saying that it is a gimmee or that it will be easy.
It takes several key elements coming together in your project and lots of work bringing your project to the people, but it is possible to raise $5,000 through your existing Circle of Influence.
Your Circle of Influence is simply a list of the people in your life that you can bring your project to. This would include family, friends, fans, and even people that don’t know you yet!
The trick lies in making sure that you leave no stone unturned.
Let’s take a look at Swimming With Bears’ CanHeKick.It graph.
They have no email list and a small number of FB fans and they made it all the way to about $5,000 without a problem.
Now, all there is to do is raise the rest!
STEP TWO: Self Pledge $15,000
If you’ve made it this far, hopefully you’ve figured out how tongue-in-cheek this post really is.
Yes, it is well within reason to raise $5,000 from your existing Circle of Influence even if you have no email list or fan base.
It is, however, highly unlikely that you can raise $20,000 without some shenanigans.
Swimming With Bears appears to have made an obvious self-pledge.
I advocate against this possibility for 3 reasons.
It’ll cost you 8% to Kickstarter and Amazon
You can avoid this necessity by defining an optimal goal strategy using a combination of your Minimum Viable Project and Flex Goals.
It seems disingenuous to your backers.
But that being said, Swimming With Bears DID raise close to $5,000 from about 60 backers. That is an average of $83 per backer. These amounts ARE doable for a relatively inexperienced band IF you are smart and IF you are willing to work.
If you are considering your own crowdfunding project, know that you can do it. Keep studying projects, especially in our 100 Music Kickstarters To Learn From series, and sign up for our 5 part email lesson in the sidebar!
Google is making it much easier to find your favourite song lyrics
Google has signed a multiyear licensing deal with Toronto-based company LyricFind to "display song lyrics in [Google] search results," according to a Billboard report.
The partnership was announced on Monday, which on the same day resulted in a new Google feature: When you search for a song's lyrics, Google shows a large portion of those lyrics at the top of the results.
Google's move into the lyric business will generate a new and "significant" stream of revenue for music publishers and songwriters, according to LyricFinder chief executive and cofounder Darryl Ballantyne.
"It should be a significant revenue stream," Ballantyne told Billboard. "I can’t get into the rates, but we expect it to be millions of dollars generated for publishers and songwriters as a result of this. It’s all based on usage. Royalties are paid based on the number of times a lyric is viewed. The more it’s viewed, the more publishers get paid."
Founded in 2004, LyricFind has "amassed licensing from over 4,000 music publishers" and provides lyric licensing and online services across 100 countries, according to its website.
As a result of Google's partnership with LyricFind, user searches for song lyrics on Google will now display several stanzas of lyric text at the top of the page, with a link out to the full lyrics as well as an option to purchase or stream the song on Google Play — as seen below in a search for the lyrics to Steely Dan's 1977 song "Peg."
A search for "steely dan peg lyrics" reveals a large portion of the song's lyrics.Google
As Billboard notes, the company's partnership with Google in this new feature will likely have a significant impact on users' click-through rates to licensed lyric sites like AZLyrics.com, as well as to the slew of unlicensed sites.
Google's move may also hurt Genius, which has been building up its community of users who annotate song lyrics.
That Digital Music Service You Love Is a Terrible Business
Digital music appears to be dead as a standalone business, or at least on life support.
Every few months, the ongoing upheaval in the digital-music business forces its way into the public consciousness—Rdio goes bankrupt, Pandora hangs out a “For Sale” sign and then gets rid of its CEO, artists and labels ramp up their criticism of YouTube. Now we have Tidal in acquisition talks with Apple, while Spotify complains about Apple treating it unfairly.
The media and music community seem divided on whether an Apple-Tidal combination would be a good idea. Some say it would be a huge mistake for Apple AAPL0.30%, in part because Tidal hasn’t proven to be successful in either adding users or growing its business—although it has a number of popular features, including its access to artist exclusives.
Others, however, argue that buying Tidal may make sensefor a number of reasons, depending on the price.
From a macro perspective, there’s a common theme among all of these developments: Namely, that the digital music business is becoming an industry in which only a truly massive company with huge scale and deep pockets can hope to compete. And that spells trouble for Spotify and every other independent music service.
Rdio went bankrupt last year in large part because it couldn’t afford to make the licensing payments the record industry requires of streaming services. Deezer, a European service, postponed a planned initial public offering partly because its business is financially shaky for the same reason.
And within months of announcing that it was acquiring Rdio last year, Pandora was reported to be on the block (although co-founder Tim Westergren has downplayed that idea since he took over as the company’s CEO).
Tidal, meanwhile, has been shopping itself around almost since it premiered last year. It got a tidal wave of publicity because it was backed by hip-hop musician and producer Jay Z and a number of other artists, including his wife and fellow superstar Beyoncé. But the service has had trouble adding users, and is reportedly losing money at a fairly rapid pace.
Realistically speaking, Tidal must be acquired by someone, whether it’s Apple or Amazon (which is also trying to grow its music service) or even Rhapsody, another music service with which Tidal has also apparently had discussions.
Rhapsody—which recently announced that it is renaming itself Napster, after the pioneering file-sharing network it acquired in 2011—has been around longer than almost any other streaming service, but is still racking up massive losses for parent RealNetworks.
Then there’s Spotify. Over the past couple of years, it has become one of the world’s most popular streaming services with 100 million subscribers, 30 million of whom pay a monthly fee. But like every other music service, Spotify has found it almost impossible to make money, primarily because of onerous licensing payments.
You can feel some of the tension coming through in the letter that Spotify sent to Apple, complaining that the company is using its control over the app ecosystem to harm a competitor. This behavior “continues a troubling pattern of behavior to exclude and diminish the competitiveness of Spotify,” the company said (Apple responded that Spotify’s latest software update was a clear breach of its developer rules, and that the company is “resorting to rumors and half-truths”).
What you need to know about Spotify’s $1 billion debt deal. Watch:
Last year, Spotify lost $200 million and had to raise $1 billion in debt financing just to remain in business. More than 85% of the revenue it takes in goes to music licensing costs. And yet, various players in the recorded-music industry—record labels, publishing companies, music distributors and even individual artists—routinely argue that services like Spotify aren’t paying enough, and that advertising-supported services like YouTube are even worse.
Who is to blame for this state of affairs? That’s a difficult question to answer. The recording industry may want to blame YouTube and Napster, or even Apple, but the reality is that the way music is consumed has changed forever, and we are still figuring out how that works.
At this point, all the available evidence seems to show that the digital-music business, at least the way it is currently structured, simply isn’t economic. The only way for anyone to even come close to making it work is to make it part of a much larger company, like Apple or Amazon or Google. That way they can absorb the losses, they have the heft to negotiate with the record industry, and they can find synergies with their other businesses.
In other words, music as a standalone business appears to be dead, or at least on life support.
