Does W.A.S.P. Stand For “We Are Screwing Promoters?”

In their ’80s heyday, W.A.S.P. was known for their shocking theatrical stage show. After their second show cancellation in one week, the most shocking thing they could do now is actually play a show. Following last week’s cancellation in New York, fans were turned away from last night’s show in Allentown, PA at the Crocodile Rock without any explanation.

Frontman Blackie Lawless defended the New York cancellation on the band’s Web site, essentially stating what had been said before. 50 of the 500 fans at the Gramercy Theater had bought VIP packages for $50, guaranteeing them a meet and greet with the band. Apparently, Blackie freaked out when told about this, and demanded the fans be given back the$25 extra they’d been charged. When the promoters refused, he pulled the plug on the show.

If Crocodile Rock was a Live Nation venue like Gramercy Theater, it would be understood why he might have pulled out of the show. However, Crocodile Rock looks like it’s booked independently, and not only were tickets only $12.50 in advance, it doesn’t look like there was any VIP package offered. A post on the band’s message board suggested that he canceled the Allentown show because the venue wanted too much of a percentage of the merch sold.

Regardless of why he pulled out of the Allentown show, there’s really no way around it: canceling two shows in less than a week on the day of the show is a dick move. We gave him the benefit of the doubt for the New York show since he said he was essentially sticking up for his fans. But 50 fans out of 500 basically means that he was looking out for only 1 out of 10 fans (btw, W.A.S.P. sold 500 tickets in New York? Whoa!). If he comes back to NYC, the majority of those 500 probably won’t buy tickets again, and ditto for Allentown. We thought he’d lost it all the way back in September when he compared Obama to Hitler , and this isn’t winning him any points in the “Blackie Lawless isn’t a total nutcase” category.

W.A.S.P. Cancels NYC Show At Last Minute, Life Goes On

Last night was a busy one for New York metal fans. Concertgoers had to decide between seeing Shrinebuilder and Wolves in the Throne Room at NYU, The Dillinger Escape Plan/Darkest Hour/Iwrestledabearonce/Animals as Leaders at Irving Plaza, or W.A.S.P. at the Gramercy Theater. Actually, scratch that last one. Shortly before it was to have begun, W.A.S.P. cancelled the show, leaving 500 ticket holders out in the cold.

While this is unconfirmed, we hear that Live Nation had scheduled a meet and greet as part of a VIP package, and Blackie Lawless and the rest of the band freaked out, since they hadn’t been informed about it beforehand. Apparently, the band have cancelled shows at the last minute in the past. And to the band’s semi-credit, apparently Lawless signed some autographs for fans. I say “semi-credit” because if he really put the kibosh on the show at the 11th hour over something as arbitrary as a meet and greet (which I’m sure he got extra money for anyway), that’s not the right way to treat your fans.

Bullet For My Valentine Give Away Free Track… If Fans Pimp For Them

Bullet For My Valentine spent last week hyping the release of a new “free” track on Tuesday, and upon launch, many fans were disappointed to find the download required fans to promote the song on their Twitter or Facebook pages.

The promotion, through a service called TweetMatic, uses Twitter and Facebook’s APIs to open access to users’ accounts, whereupon it posts this message to followers/friends:

I just downloaded ‘Begging For Mercy’ from Bullet For My Valentine’s (@bfmvofficial) new album ‘Fever’ for FREE! http://mblx.us/bfmv

Some fans are understandably upset, and for a number of reasons:

• While it’s not a bait-and-switch, it can feel like one: “FREE download! Wait, first, do some work for us!”
• Allowing TweetMatic to access users’ Twitter and Facebook accounts gives them access to personal data, which they might not necessarily be interested in collecting, but still makes the user uneasy.
• The user might be opposed to posting the standardized message, as it comes off as impersonal and might even make it appear the user has been hacked. While you can personalize your message, that’s not very clear, and many users won’t care to make the effort to understand the process.
• The user hasn’t even had a chance to stream or sample the music before doing any of this. They might make all these concessions for a song they won’t even like. It’s one thing to do a little bit of work or give up some personal information to get something you really want, but we’re talking about a first-taste of a brand-new song.

While I’m not totally opposed to asking users for something like this in exchange for something (tweeting for a webstore coupon, bonus material, or something premium – Every Time I Die does this in exchange for streaming an entire DVD), this is probably not the most feel-good way to make a first impression and launch a release. It comes across as disingenuous when you build anticipation among fans (and rally with the word “FREE”), only to add even a minor speed bump between the fans and the music. With all of the white noise and hypersaturation of information facing music fans, the last thing you want to do is complicate the process.

For you BFMV fans, though, our buddies at MetalSucks found the song on YouTube:

Documents: EMI Was Almost Broken Up

According to court documents filed in New York, the chairman of Terra Firma Capital Partners Ltd., owners of  EMI Group, proposed to break up the music company in November. Guy Hands proposed splitting the group’s music publishing and recorded music divisions in a letter to their lender, Citigroup Inc., the Wall Street Journal revealed, calling it “essential.” Citigroup rejected the proposal, which would have separated the struggling recorded music division (which includes Virgin and Capitol) from the healthier music publishing division.

The report came to light as a result of legal action between the two entities. Last year, Terra Firma asked Citigroup to write off $1 billion of EMI’s debts in return for them pumping as much money into the recorded music group, which Citigroup refused. Terra Firma has since launched legal action against Citigroup, claiming that they gave them bad advice prior to the purchase of EMI in 2007. Also uncovered in the court filings was an internal memo from EMI Recorded Music chief Elio Leoni0 Sceti claiming that morale among their staff and artists was at an all time low.  EMI Group is the fourth largest record company in the world.

Best Buy Promotes Interscope CDs By Giving Away Something That Was Already Free

This “deal” caught my attention during my holiday shopping, but I have to credit TechCrunch for hammering home why I found this promotion odd.

Best Buy offered a free download of TweetDeck, the Twitter app for iPhone, with the purchase of select Interscope albums from artists including Them Crooked Vultures, Hollywood Undead and Flyleaf.

Which would be a great deal, except TweetDeck is already a free app. The version offered is Interscope-branded and pre-loaded with the Twitter feeds of its artists, but still: as TechCrunch agrees, it’s a little insulting to the consumer to make a big deal out of bundling something that was already free.

Mudvayne “Fucking” Determined To Waste All Of Their Marketing Budget

Mudvayne won’t stop at spending a ton of money on (probably) extremely expensive blacklight packaging, now they’ll be shooting not one but three music videos for songs off their upcoming self-titled album.

The band will be working with director Frankie Nasso to film three conceptually linked videos for the tracks “Scream With Me“, “Beautiful And Strange” and “Heard It All Before”.

So what? Obviously this record will sell enough right off the bat to assume it will produce three singles. And expensive music videos are still totally a great idea. And we’ve heard the band doesn’t plan to tour extensively in 2010 to support the record (Chad and Greg will be working on a new HELLYEAH! album). So that’s good.

Are Royalty Fees Forcing Venues To Close?

That seems to be what an article from Web site zeropaid claims*. The site is up in arms about the three music licensing companies, BMI, ASCAP and SESAC, charging fees to nightclubs, bars and venues for live music. It states that instead of having to pay the fees, the venues are shutting down instead.

Individually the licenses are usually no more than $650 p/yr, but when combined with payments to the other two the amount grows untenable for many, especially if they’re also required to pay royalties for music played on a jukebox or radio.

So what has happened is that many are choosing to shutter live music altogether, by some accounts as many as 50% in the St Cloud, Minnesota area alone.

The main sticking point for the author of the article is that the fees clubs have to pay are for just in case an artist plays a copywritten song. But any club that has a jukebox is paying the three fees as well. And the scientific claim of 50% of the live venues closing in St. Cloud comes from a performer in a cover band, and doesn’t cite licensing fees as a reason for them closing. Another point claims that the royalty collection groups mainly collect from larger acts since they’re easier to track. That might be true, but works the same way that Roadrunner does. If signing a Nickelback can give them the finances to keep putting out Soulfly records, than everyone wins. And if a song is getting played, whether it’s live or on a jukebox, the artist deserves to be paid, especially in a time of declining CD saels.

It would be interesting to hear from a club owner as to how they feel about having to pay licensing fees. And also interesting to hear how much the penalty for copyright infringement is for ignoring the three groups.

* CBGB closed for a bunch of other reasons. SESAC, BMI and ASCAP didn’t play into those, but when you think ‘live music venue shut down,’ it’s the first that comes to mind. And Google image search.

Thank God, The Wait Is Over: Methods Of Mayhem Returns

From the “holy shit I managed to completely forget that ever happened” file: Tommy Lee’s late ’90s Crazy Town-esque shitshow Methods of Mayhem is back, and snagged a worldwide deal with Roadrunner Records’ Loud & Proud imprint.

Pandora Adds Roadblocks For Indie Bands

Until recently, music recommendation/internet radio service Pandora accepted music from independent artists at no cost, in any form, even home-burned CD’s. Hypebot now reports submitting your own music has a few extra steps, and some costs.

In part because of a deal to display album cover art via Amazon.com’s servers, submissions must now be available as a physical CD for sale on Amazon, and include cover art and a UPC code to even be considered for airplay.

Compliance with the new rules will cost artists in several ways. According to its FAQ page, to get play on Pandora you now need:

* CD of your music
* A unique UPC code for that CD
* Your CD to be available through Amazon (must be a physical CD, not just MP3s for download)
* The legal rights to your music
* MP3 files for two of the songs from your CD
* Free Pandora account, based on a valid email address, which can be associated with your music

In addition to the costs of designing art and packaging a CD, Pandora suggests indie artists join the “Amazon Advantage Program” to comply with these rules. Membership costs $29.95 per year plus 55% of the list price of every CD sold. Established artists and labels already comply with Pandora’s new rules.

Hypebot gripes that these rules are unfair to new artists trying to gain exposure though Pandora, but really, should you be clogging up someone’s playlist with a song you recorded an hour ago and aren’t ready to sell?

Court Finds Camel Fucked Up In RS Campaign

Those of you that enjoy reading legal documents (or at least The Smoking Gun) might remember that Toronto punk band Fucked Up and indie rockers Xiu Xiu sued R.J. Reynolds and Camel cigarettes a few years back. The bands appeared as part of a nine-page foldout section in the 40th anniversary Rolling Stone magazine as part of “the indie rock universe.” Problem is, neither band was asked permission by Camel to use them in the ad.

And actually, that’s only one of the problems. Camel was sued by eight states as well for the ad, which looks cartoony. Not to legally geek out, but as part of a multi-state Master Settlement Agreement, tobacco companies are forbidden to use cartoons to market tobacco products (which is why you haven’t seen this guy around lately). Apparently, R.J. Reynolds didn’t learn their lesson, and decided to drag some bands down with them.

While the class action lawsuit filed by Fucked Up and Xiu Xiu (on behalf of the 186 bands used in the spread) against R.J. Reynolds has yet to be settled, The Daily Swarm reports that the first ruling in the states’ lawsuits has come down.

A Philadelphia judge has ruled that R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. violated the multi-state tobacco Master Settlement Agreement with an ad it ran in an issue of Rolling Stone in 2007 and must either run a “youth oriented anti-smoking advertisement” in the magazine in the next year or pay a sanction of more than $300,000.

Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge William J. Manfredi issued his order and opinion Tuesday in response to the commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s motion seeking sanctions in response to Reynolds’ Camel’s the Farm advertisement. According to Manfredi’s opinion, the ad was a cartoon. The MSA clearly forbids companies from using cartoons to promote tobacco products, Manfredi said.

While running a ’smoking is bad, mmmkay?’ ad in Rolling Stone or paying 300 grand is just a drop in the bucket for big tobacco, remember there are seven other states with pending suits, as well as the bands’ lawsuit. And that’s not even taking into account the bands’ additional suit against Rolling Stone publisher Wenner Media. Under California law, where the band lawsuit was filed, punitive damages could amount to $750 per issue of Rolling Stone per band. Don’t get a calculator – we’ve done the math for you. It’s $195.3 billion. Yes. Billion.