Releasing a cover song.

Nowadays it’s very popular to release a single that is a cover song but why are all artists doing this?

Milow won the MIA award for best song with his 50 cent cover ‘Ayo Technology’. Triggerfinger had a number one single in Belgium and the Netherlands with their ‘I follow rivers’ cover.

Why are all these artists doing this? This can be because of many reasons.

When people hear 10 new songs and there is one cover song, they’ll remember the cover song because they’ve heard the song before (from an other artist of course).

This is a good method for beginning bands to get more famous. But there are more and more artists that think it’s not done for bands to release a cover song.

To conclude: you can get famous faster when you release a cover song but people can think it’s wrong. It’s a difficult decision.

The thin line between hero and junkie

The subject of my blog today is the thin line between a musical hero and a junkie.

I’ve always been a fan of Peter Doherty. I think The Libertines are one of the best bands from the last decade. Babyshambles have got some amazing tunes and Peter’s solo album is great.

I’ve seen him prefrom solo in Lokeren for the Lokerse Feesten and the year after with Babyshambles. These 2 performances were very good because he wasn’t to fucked up because of drugs and alcohol.

Tuesday April 10^th Peter Doherty played live in De Vooruit in Ghent.

He was 40min late and he was high and drunk. He played 4 songs and left the stage to get some alcohol in the backstage.
He poured a bottle of red wine on the people on the front row and he begged that nobody would upload footage from the concert on youtube.

For me this wasn’t Peter the musical hero, that was Peter the junkie. 

Same thing happend at Rock Werchter when I was waiting for Babyshambles and had to see Air Traffic again because Peter wanted to stay home to witness the birth of the kittens of his cat.
So he abounded 25 000 people because of his cat. That is Peter the junkie and complete bullshit.

Today I saw a article in NME magazine that he is going back to rehab in April.  

An Idiot Abroad

I’ve always loved the tv shows and podcasts Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant did.

Shows like The Office, Extra’s and Life’s Too Short are great shows. I love them from the pilot episode until the final episode.

But my favourite tv show from Ricky and Stephen is An Idiot Abroad.

An idiot abroad is a travel documentary broadcasted on Sky1 in England. The show shows the travel of Karl Pilkington.

Each episode Karl goes to one of the Seven Wonders of the World. He goes to Egypt to see the pyramids, he goes to China to see the great wall, …

Every normal person would love to see these wonders but not Karl Pilkington.

He doesn’t like change or different cultures and that’s what makes this show so brilliant.

Season 1 contains 8 episodes, the first 7 episodes Karl visits the Seven Wonder of the World.

The last episode is called ‘Karl comes home’ and this is the best episode of the season.

Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant are talking to Karl for 50 min about everything he did and hated on the trip.

In the second season it’s the same idea but instead of Karl visiting the Seven Wonders of the World, he does things that are on every persons bucket list like bungee jumping, living on an desert island, … but you can see it coming, it’s not on Karl’s bucket list!

I recommend this show to everyone.

The price of the tickets for Humo's Rock Rally 2012

The subjet of my blog today will be the price of the tickets for Humo’s Rock Rally.

In the first round of the Belgian contest Humo’s Rock Rally there are 100 bands that play in in 10 venues in Belgium, well in Flanders actually.

So in every venue, there are playing 10 unknown bands. Each band can play 3 songs.

Every band has family and friends that want to see them play live because Humo’s Rock Rally is one of the most important rock rally’s of Belgium.

The venue and Humo know that these people will pay for the tickets no matter how much the ticket is. In the first round the tickets were 12 euro.

Think about it, these are bands that normally play for free in a bar. And in the bar they play 30 or 40 minutes.
In the Humo’s Rock Rally the bands play 15 min (or 3 songs) and you have to pay 12 euro.

So if every band invites 30 people, there will be 300 people who paid 12 euro.

The venue has 3 600 euro profit on the tickets because they don’t need to pay all the bands that are playing there.

In the first round there is 3 600 x 10 venues = 36 000 euro profit.

The price only increases with time..

In the 2^nd round there are still 20 bands, divided in 2 venues. A ticket for the Humo’s Rock Rally semi finals was 15 euro.

Because this is the semi finals the bands will bring even more people to the show.
So, if every band takes 40 people, there will be 400 people who paid 15 euro.

The venue has 6 000 euro profit on the tickets because they don’t need to pay all the bands that are playing there.

In the semi finals there is 6 000 x 2 venues = 12 000 euro profit.

And then there are the finals.

There are 10 bands that play in the Ancienne Belgique in Brussels. This is what everyone has been waiting for.

Every band takes as many people they know to the finals. If every band takes 80 people, there will be 800 people who paid 17 euro for a ticket.

The venue has 13 600 euro profit on the tickets because they don’t need to pay all the bands that are playing there.

So, if we do the math.

36 000 + 12 000 + 13 600 = 61 600 euro profit.

73 600 euro profit earned on bands that you don’t have to pay.
I hope you see my problem now.. 

Illegal downloading: friend of enemy?

The subject of my blog will be the discussion or illegal downloading is a friend or an enemy for artists.

The first reaction would be to say illegal downloading is the enemy.

Which is a natural reaction because there are a lot of problems with it.

The biggest problem is that the artists don’t get the money they should get from selling records because nobody is paying for the records anymore.

But if you think about it, there are also advantages; 2 big advantages to be specific.

The first advantage is the fact that it’s free. 20 years ago people went to shops to buy records but because there were so many new releases every week people had to choose between different records if they didn’t had enough money.

This problem doesn’t exist anymore because everything is free.

The second advantage is the availability of the music.

Most bands that release a debut album don’t release the record in the whole world because it’s too expensive for the labels.

Because of the Internet and the illegal downloading; people from Europe, Asia, America, … can download your record or a track from the record even if the record is only released in Belgium.

Because of these 2 advantages you can gain fans from around the whole world and this can mean the big break true for a band. Look at some perfect examples like Arctic Monkeys, Lily Allen or Kate Nash who had build up a fan base after they uploaded some tracks to Myspace.

Still it’s a never-ending discussion, illegal downloading friend or enemy. But one thing is for sure, there is nothing that we can do about it, I’m afraid illegal downloading is here to stay.

Is the world going to end on 21 December 2012

I was very curious to find what the buzz was about when everyone said the world is going to end on 21 December 2012.
We’ve seen a lot of movies about it and we’ve heard a lot of songs about it.
But what’s really going on?

There are many different Mayans calendars but the calendar we know the best is the Gregorian calendar.

This calendar has a different counting system:

Kin = 1 day

Uinal = 20 Kin = 20 days

Tun = 18 Uinal = 360 days

Katun = 20 Tun = 7200 days

Baktun = 20 Katun = 144 000 days

The Mayans also wrote the time like this: Baktun.Katun.Tun.Uinal.Kin

For example 2.4.56.43.11

On 21 December 2012 the Mayans Gregorian calendar will be at 13.0.0.0.0.
According to the Mayans this won’t the end of the world but the end of the world like we know it. It will be the beginning of the 4^th dimension. Everything we think is normal won’t be normal anymore.

But to prove we don’t need to fear, here are some facts:

- The 3th dimension started after 13.0.0.0.0 but the Mayans never wrote that the 4^th dimension also would start after 13.0.0.0.0.

- The beginning of calendar is based on the creation of earth. The Mayans thought the earth was created 3114 years before Christ because that was the first time they found different documents that described the same historical facts like the Spanish war in South America. But as we know now the world is 4,3 billion years old so the calendar started to late.

We don’t need to worry about the world ending in 2012. We will live happily ever after.

BBC Sound of 2012

Every year BBC asks all the important people in the music business who they think are going to breakthrough in the year that is coming or who they want to sign.

Logically, this is one of the most important list bands can be nominated for.

If we look at the history of ‘the sound of’ lists, we can see that 7 out 10 bands nominated for this list make it in the music business.

The first list BBC made was in 2003 and most of the artists who were nominated are still at the top of the music business.

50 Cent, Yeah Yeah Yeah’s, Interpol, Sean Paul, … these are just some names who were nominated in 2003. But the list goes on every year..

In the last 9 years these bands were nominated and I’m sure you’ve heard of them:

Franz Ferdinand, Bloc Party, The Game, Mika, The Klaxons, Enter Shikari, Adele, MGMT, White Lies, Florence + the machine, Lady Gaga, The Drum, James Blake, …

A month ago the BBC released the long list of the ‘BBC Sound of 2012’.

Like every year I’ve heard of some bands but other bands I’ve never heard of.

Skrillex, Flux Pavilion and Spector sound very familiar in my ears. Other bands don’t but I’m sure I’ll hear from them in 2012.

This year is the first year the BBC nominated electronic music.

There has always been a lot of rock, indie, electro-pop and hip-hop but never electronic music like dub-step.

Dub-step was huge in 2011 and according to the music business it will be even bigger in 2012 with artists like Skrillex and Flux Pavilion.

If you think about it, the music business is so complicated.
There is no formula for success and the business is so unpredictable.

If you ask me; it’s all about luck, passion and being on the right place at the right time.