Various: Now Hear This! Issue 63

At first I was impressed by Stephen Emmer's Passengers, which you can hear here, but the more I looked into it, the more its charms fell away. First the revelation that the text was lifted from Paul Theroux; second, that it was read by Lou Reed (very well, actually; he's not just playing up to his usual persona); and, third, the rubbish video, which undermines the open-endedness of the text with a dumb in-your-dreams narrative. Suddenly it all felt like atmosphere-by-numbers.

I have fewer nits to pick with the other track that sounded interesting on my run-through, but I do have one. It's a simple folk-pop song with a pretty arrangement by Jaymay (hear it here). Her Last.fm bio puts store in the facts that, "She has been described by the BBC as 'darling of the New York "Anti-Folk" scene', and by the New York Times as a 'big name for the indie universe'" as though we should be impressed by the authority of these big media names, when the descriptions concerned make it evident that the journalists concerned didn't really know what they were talking about.

I'm suspicious, as ever, about the terms of these covermount CDs. David Hepworth's sleeve notes makes significant play on the effort that goes into selecting this "digest of the best and most interesting" while thanking the "record companies and artists who have allowed their material to be included". I can't be sure how Word magazine works, but my understanding is that the standard industry practice for covermounts is that the record labels pay to have their material included for its assumed promotional value — they're not seeing it as a selfless gift. If that were the case with Word, I hope they would disclose it.

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Comments

[David Hepworth]

"My understanding is that the standard industry practice for covermounts is that the record labels pay to have their material included for its assumed promotional value — they're not seeing it as a selfless gift."

That's funny because my understanding - based on thirty years experience - is that they NEVER do that.

[Steve Lawson]

David H,

My experience is that both happens - some magazines have 'space for hire' on their cover discs, others offer it 'for free', and pay the MCPS royalties on it. In the last 10 years I've been offered all kinds of 'promotional deals' by magazines big and small offering to put my music on their disc for money, and almost all of those that offered cover-disc space for free did so on the proviso that I signed a publishing waver that meant that didn't have to pay the MCPS (They asked that I submit only music to which I owned all the publishing, so that they wouldn't have to pay the mechanical royalty on it.)

I recently blogged about this, and had public and private communication from a range of musicians whose experience ran all the way from them getting great exposure via mags that helped promote them, to them being massively ripped off by pluggers promising cover-disc presence, but ending up charging them through the nose for it, such that they'd have been far better off just giving away the first pressing of their album.

Same seems to be true for photography - I know photographers who are routinely paid by magazines, some who are asked to contribute photography for free 'as good promotion' (despite getting no credit) and others who've just had magazines take their photos from photo sharing sites without credit, notice or payment, despite the obvious 'all rights reserved' copyright notice.

As with all these things, the experience and practice of publishers and artists runs the gamut of possible transactions, some of them scrupulous, many of them decidedly not so...

[David]

Thanks, Steve.

David,

Thanks for making it clear that Word receives no payment from labels for the tracks included on the cover CDs.

You challenged my assertion that it's standard industry practice for covermounts is that the record labels pay to have their material included. Fair enough; it sounds like I was wrong about the "standard industry practice" bit.

But when you said that never happens, I went back to check with my two sources, both of whom have pretty direct experience of covermount deals. Steve was one -- the original story he told me, as I remember it, was of a prog/classic rock band that was much praised in a specialist magazine, but couldn't afford to have their music on the magazine's CD. Anyway, he's elaborated above, implying that "never" is too strong.

The other source was my friend Eric, who runs a start-up digital distribution company, but has had some involvement with The Wire's covermounts (physical and download). Here's what I wrote about that at the time. I'll check whether there's a misunderstanding in that, and update here (and in the original) if there is. That will take longer than Steve's response.