High On Fire Streaming New Album Online

High On Fire is streaming their new album Snakes For The Divine in its entirety on their MySpace page.

That’s about all the info we’ve got, and we’d normally run info like this as a news story, but the album cover is so good, we needed to show it. The album itself is awesome too. It comes out on Tuesday, so go buy it.

Rhapsody To Officially Separate from MTV, RealNetworks

In a major development to a story that first broke back in November, RealNetworks and MTV Newtworks announced late yesterday that they are spinning off their Rhapsody America music streaming joint venture into a new, independently-operated company.

From Hypebot:

The restructuring is expected to be completed by the end of the first quarter.

According to documents filed with the SEC, Real, MTVN and one or more minority stockholders will hold shares of less than 50% of the new company. The reamaining stock will presumably be available to make or attract outside investments. Real will contribute $18 million in cash to launch the new venture, and take back control of its international radio business. MTVN will contribute $33 million in advertising, but its previous commitment of $111 million in ads will be canceled.

Will independence set up Rhapsody to be a more efficient, focused company that’s more attractive to investors, or finally cast the troubled service into the sunset?

New Music Industry Trend – Wearable Albums

The old saying for in favor of having lots of  merch designs is “you can’t download a t-shirt.” Well, you still can’t, but coming soon to a store near you is the ‘Music Tee,’ in which you buy a T-shirt that comes with a hangtag with a link redeemable for downloads. According to Digital Music News, Warner Bros.  and Interscope have signed on to license the Music Tee idea, which was created via a joint venture with PR firm Girlie Action and the LA-based label Invisible DJ. What’s more is that the shirts will be counted by Nielsen SoundScan, so they’ll count towards sales.

While many of the shirts available so far are for indie and alternative bands (Third Eye Blind, Mutemath), Girlie Action and Invisible DJ have unveiled a ‘vintage collection’ of shirts, with three relatively niche bands: Bad Religion, Bad Brains, and Exciter. Exciter? Whoa. We didn’t even know Heavy Metal Maniac was still in print! The shirts generally have album artwork on the front and a track listing on the back. The Music Tee is a little steep at $45, but the right combination of album and artwork could make it a worthy purchase. And hey, it might even turn some fashionistas on to music they haven’t heard before. I mean, how many times have you seen someone like Lindsay Lohan ironically wearing a Motorhead shirt? And how many Motorhead songs do you think she knows? Exactly. You can pre-order the three coolest shirts here.

Metal Label Releases Compilation For Haiti Relief

We’re not CNN or anything, but you’d have to be completely oblivious or willfully ignorant to have not heard about the devastating earthquake in Haiti last Tuesday. Well over 100,000 are reported to have perished in Haiti’s capital Port au Prince alone, and rescue and recovery efforts are still underway.

While some may have donated to relief efforts already, Sargent House and Rodriguez-Lopez Productions are giving incentive to those who haven’t yet by offering up their recent digital sampler for download with all proceeds going to Doctors Without Borders.  The 18-track sampler has music by The Mars Volta’s Omar Rodriguez Lopez and Sargent House artists including Red Fang, These Arms are Snakes, and Red Sparowes, among many others. It’s available in all digital formats as an instant download for whatever anyone wants to donate. While we’ve all got our own financial problems, an unprecedented amount of help and relief for this catastrophe is required, and you can get new music and help at the same time. Don’t be a d-bag – pick this up.

Digital Sales Growth Slows In 2009

Digital music sales growth is slowing and could soon plateau, according to a Billboard analysis of 2009 SoundScan data. In terms of percentage and unit change, digital sales still increased last year, but to a significantly less degree than the previous two years.

To be sure, the changes are positive, not negative. But growth is disappearing. From 2006 to 2008, annual sales of digital tracks rose between 225 million and 229 million units. In 2009, unit growth fell to 90 million. A similar but less drastic trend is seen in sales of digital albums.

With ringtone sales falling and ad-supported revenues far below expectations, growth in download sales had been the one bright spot for the record industry. Now, growth has slowed to a crawl and, barring an immensely successful new product or service, could plateau by 2011.

This data could be alarming, as many hoped digital sales would continue to grow for years to the level of high disc sales seen in the pre-Napster era, essentially replacing the outdated media.

As Billboard hints, the strong growth in 2006-2008 can be tied to the critical mass of digital media player adoption. Those where the years where the majority of consumers were first-time iPod owners, and therefore first-time digital music consumers. More recent iPod/iPhone sales are likely replacing consumers’ older units rather than going to iPod virgins. With less consumers purchasing digital music for the first time, we may be getting a look at the complete market for the next few years.

Blog Post Details How Labels Shaft Bands

Too Much Joy weren’t metal, but anyone in a band looking for a major label deal needs to read this now. The band, who broke up in 1999, put out three records through Warner Bros., and never really caught on, but that’s beside the point. In an amazing and sobering blog post, the band’s Timothy Quirk writes about receiving a digital royalty statement for the three Warner albums, which, while out of print physically, had been available digitally for five years.

While the band had been collecting thousands of dollars in digital royalties from their four independent albums, the statements from the three WB albums kept being showing $0 in digital sales against the band’s ridiculous unrecouped balance of $395,277. It took Quirk 13 months to finally get their digital royalties added, with a grand result of $62.47. Here’s why it’s really ridiculous, though. Quirk works at Rhapsody, so he knows a thing or two about what his band should be making digitally. And it was only through his job that he was given the favor of getting anything to show up on the statement at all. He’d appeared on a panel with someone in business affairs from Warner Bros., and mentioned that he’d been trying to get their iTunes sales reported.

What the fuck?

I mean, we all know that major labels are supposed to be venal masters of hiding money from artists, but they’re also supposed to be good at it, right? This figure wasn’t insulting because it was so small, it was insulting because it was so stupid.

Granted, a band that never made the label money is much lower on the priority scale than a current multi-platinum band that demands proper accounting. But reading Quirk’s blog post details how sloppy and lazy WB is, and while he was able to get his (badly accounted for and ridiculously low)  royalty statement because of his persistence and someone he randomly met, what does that mean for the countless other bands without connections that aren’t the Red Hot Chili Peppers or Linkin Park?

MOG Streaming Service Quick Thoughts

We spent an hour futzing around with MOG.com, the new streaming service “that promises an experience better than Rhapsody, Pandora and iTunes combined” for $5 a month, and here are our quick thoughts:

Pros
- Excellent sound quality. My entirely non-scientific evaluation from some decent computer speakers leads me to believe it sounds much fuller and less compressed than Rhapsody or Pandora’s streams.
- Slick interface. It blows away Rhapsody’s clunky UI.
- There’s quite a bit of content for each artist, as MOG uses it’s advertising network to pull down artist-specific news posts.
- There’s a lot of extra information like lyrics and bios.
- There’s a great slider function that lets you find a preferred balance between listening to an all-artist station and a station of just similar artists. You can adjust the slider at any point in the playlist. We really like this feature.
- The library seems pretty good, with all four major labels signed on, and we see most of the notable metal labels (Roadrunner, Nuclear Blast, Century Media, Ferret, Relapse, etc.)

Cons
- The library isn’t that complete: Tool and Metallica are among notable artists not yet signed on, but this could/should change as the service develops.
- You can’t edit playlists on-the-fly. So let’s say you really like what’s coming up on a “similar artists” queue, but there’s a couple skippables, you can’t remove them ahead of time or wedge in something else without wiping the entire queue clean.
- The recommendation engine seems to be a bit more refined than the other services.
- Some of the bios seem to be out of date and the news/blog posts are either user generated or from other sites, so it’s a bit slipshod.

Have you had time to use it? What do you think? Is a $5 monthly streaming buffet worth it?

MOG’s Alleged “Better Than iTunes, Pandora & Rhapsody Combined” Service Goes Live

Music streaming service MOG went live this morning, with all four major labels signed on. The company promises a deep library at a $5 monthly fee, and boasts a service “better than Rhapsody, iTunes and Pandora…combined.”

We’ll see about that. We just signed up for a free trial and will post thoughts this afternoon. Here’s a video pitch:

Apple Opens iTunes LP And Extras To Indie Artists, Labels

Apple is expanding its iTunes LP and Extras (read: silly gimmick no one really cares about) feature to indie artists, labels and developers. The “new” technology (read: basically an e-card included with your digital album for a few extra bucks) was previously only available to major labels through partnerships.

An automated electronic submission method will be added in the first quarter of next year. Until then, it’s a bit of a hassle. An existing iTunes contract is required, and all submissions will be reviewed by the iTunes team “for appropriateness of content and for technical quality”.

Templates and a developers guide for both formats is available here.

What do you think? Do the LP/Extras formats interest you as a consumer? Would you pay more? Artists, do you think this adds value to your product? Will you consider using it in a future release?

MTV, RealNetworks Giving Power Back To Rhapsody?

According to SEC filings by RealNetworks, they are in negotiations with MTV to change the terms of its partnership with the Rhapsody in a move that could give the floundering music service more operating autonomy. From the always wonderful hypebot:

Two years after founding the joint company, the partners may reduce Real’s 51% share in Rhapsody so that both parties own 50% or less of the digital music service. According to the filing, the goal of the negotiations is to “enable Rhapsody to operate more independently of either party.”

Even with MTV’s $230 million investment in Rhapsody, the music subscription and download service has failed to gain real traction. And now competitors like Napster, MOG and perhaps Rdio and Spotify are or will soon be offering stiff competition at lower price points.

Of course, some autonomy would have been nice when Rhapsody saw its New York office entirely closed last December, but being able to make smarter, faster, purely self-interested decisions as a smaller company could help the company who’s always seemed to be one step behind. Of course, if Apple ever really unveils a subscription service, everyone’s toast.