What’s your opinion on artists doing exclusivity deals with retailers – physical or digital – when they release new records? Just this week Gloria Estefan announced that her new album, her first English language record since 2003, will only be available, initially at least, in physical form via Target, and online via iTunes.

There was a time when such exclusivity deals were unusual, and would nearly always result in vocal outrage from independent music retailers, and even the bigger CD sellers, because more often than not these deals are done with retailers who don’t specifically specialise in music, companies like Target.

More traditional record store owners argue that they need to be able to sell the big releases – and exclusivity deals are always done around big releases – for two reasons. First, they sell in larger numbers, and therefore bring in significant revenues, money music retailers really need to ensure they are commercially viable. Second, big releases bring more casual music consumers into their stores, who may then spend money on other albums while they are there.

But why should artists and labels care about the needs of record shops? Well, record retailers will be sure to remind you, they are the people who support the smaller artists, and smaller releases, and offer high street access to back catalogue. The more generic retailers don’t do any of that. Which is why specialist and independent music retailers are important to the wider industry. And to survive, those retailers will tell you, they need to sell the big releases.

That said, as artist retailer exclusivity deals have become more common, the level of outrage coming from the smaller music retailers has fallen considerably. Though, when Jay-Z and Kanye West announced that their ‘Watch The Throne’ album would only be available via Best Buy and iTunes earlier this summer the indie record shop community did rally a little. Possibly because that was exactly the sort of album that would bring casual but high-spending music fans into their stores. Possibly because they felt Jay-Z was exactly the sort of person that should be fighting their corner, not adding to their problems.

Jay did respond, and said he felt a “little bit bad” about his exclusivity deal, but then stuck with it anyway, and put forward a rather lame excuse about trying to stop the record being leaked before release. Though the deal did ensure the hip hop duo broke an iTunes sales record.

My gut feeling is that I’m with the music retailers on this, and too many exclusivity deals seems like a bad thing for music makers and music fans alike. Though the businessman in me does see why artists enter into such arrangements.

While some retailers will pay for the deal, more often than not the real attraction is that the retail company will give your record a big push, display it in a prime position, promote it around store and elsewhere, and bring your music to a much bigger audience than your label could otherwise afford. And in these days when labels are cutting budgets, and artists have to fight ever harder to get attention, you can understand the lure of such an arrangement.

So I’m of two minds on this one. What do you think?

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I went to a debate on copyright last week. In Scotland. And a Scottish lawyer said something interesting. But why is this relevant to you, the (probably) American music fan?

Well, what he said was this. “Isn’t it interesting that an industry that has been able to sell us Cheryl Cole and Susan Boyle and all those other ‘Idol’ and ‘X-Factor’ stars, and which persuades millions of people to part with their hard earned cash to buy all sorts of things linked to those celebrities, has failed to persuade a large part of the population that they should pay for digital content”.

That lawyer – his name was Paul Carlyle and he sits on the Law Society Of Scotland’s Intellectual Property committee – was expressing concern that, while the entertainment industry has, in the main, in the US and much of Europe, persuaded politicians of the importance of protecting copyright online, often resulting in new rules to crackdown on piracy, he’s not convinced the record companies and film studios have won the public debate. And it’s much harder to enforce laws, he argued, if the majority of the population don’t believe in them.

Of course there have been various efforts by the music and film industries to communicate the positive side of copyright over the years, some moderately successful, most awful, some counter-productive. But I think the Scottish attorney is right. As the content industries start to win the debate in political circles (and to be fair, when it comes to Congress, there’s still some way to go), they should turn their attention once again to engaging with the public on this.

Music makers and music sellers need to try and find more engaging ways to communicate why, actually, copyright and exciting new music go hand in hand. And why, therefore, copyrights are worth protecting, And why, therefore, people should be willing to pay a fair price to access digital content.

This might be better achieved if artists and labels were to team up with those big players in the digital world who have a vested interest in the longterm success of the copyright system. There were a lot of articles written about Apple boss Steve Jobs’ many achievements when it was announced he was standing down as the IT firm’s CEO last month, but surely one of his greatest feats was doing what labels in the main have failed to do: persuading people to pay for digital music.

The mantra of the music industry in the early days of P2P file-sharing was that it was “impossible to compete with free”, yet in iTunes Apple did and continues to do just that, despite illegal file-sharing being pretty much as big as it ever was. Not only that, but many people, myself included, buy music from iTunes even when we know that Amazon are probably selling it cheaper. These are clearly people the artist and label community need on their side when trying to sell the positive side of copyright.

The other people the music community should involve is you, the committed full-on music fan (which is why, in case you wondered, this IS all relevant to yourselves). If you’re a fan of great new music, and you see great new bands you love struggling to launch their careers because of a flagging record industry, you are more likely to support the music community’s case as to why copyrights are worth protecting. But as music consumers you also have the other perspective, and can let artists and labels know what the queries that puzzle and annoy the man on the street really are. The industry needs that knowledge before it can successfully enter the public debate.

So let’s take up the mission set by a Scottish lawyer, follow the lead of a Californian geek, tap into the insights of the average Inside Track reader, and then get out their and win the public as well as the political debate on copyright, and why it can be a very good thing indeed.

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I’ve always thought it was strange that the first internet phenomenon to be turned into a movie was Facebook. For starters, Facebook has, in the main, been an unstoppable success story, and where’s the movie-style drama in that? Perhaps it’s Hollywood’s desire for a happy ending, that being something the MySpace story couldn’t really deliver. Well not yet. Who knows how things will turn out once newly appointed Creative Director Justin Timberlake works his magic.

But surely the internet story that really deserves to be told is that of Napster, the college dorm room creation that achieved world domination and rocked the music industry to its very core in the matter of months. Although sued out of business relatively quickly, the impact of that incredibly innovative but, as it turned out, illegal content sharing exchange is still being felt to this day.

Well, the good news is that a Napster movie is in the making. Actually, it’s been in production for the best part of ten years now, long before the first screenplay for ‘The Social Network’ was written, but things are finally coming together. And, perhaps wary of being seen as a ‘Social Network’ imitation, it has been transformed from a dramatisation about the rise and fall of the original P2P network, into a more simple documentary.

Of course the Napster and Facebook stories have a character in common in Sean Parker, played by the aforementioned Timberlake in ‘The Social Network’. If only the Napster film had been a dramatization as originally planned he could have reprised the role.

The new film is being directed by Alex Winter, best know as Bill in ‘Bill & Ted’, and he told Deadline this week: “The rise and fall of Napster and the birth of peer-to-peer file-sharing technology created by Shawn Fanning [the other Napster Shawn] when he was a college student, changed music to movies, and made possible everything from Julian Assange, WikiLeaks to the iPod and Facebook. It became an expression of youth revolt, and contributed to a complete shift in how information, media and governments work. And it is a fascinating human story, where this eighteen year old kid invents a peer-to-peer file-sharing system, and brings it to the world six months later”.

He added: “Nobody wanted to deal with this college kid and the music industry took a hard stance and focused on shutting him down. It’s a grey area. I can understand Fanning’s side, but I can also empathise with the horror that Metallica’s Lars Ulrich felt when a single that wasn’t even finished ended up on the radio”.

Apparently Parker and Fanning will both appear in the movie. Perhaps Timberlake could get a cameo, this time playing himself as the injured pop star. Not that the file-sharing phenomenon ever did his career much harm.

We’ll keep our ears to the ground and let you know when the Napster story is likely to arrive in the theaters.

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Last week during rioting in London a distribution centre owned by Sony Corp, in the North of the UK capital, was burned to the ground.

Among the companies who used the center was one called [PIAS], which is the biggest distributor for British independent record companies. Which means in that building were thousands of CDs and records belonging to small labels, ready to be shipped to record shops or mail-order companies. And all those CDs and records were lost in the fire.

Most of the affected labels will be insured, of course, but the loss of those records could still be hugely damaging to them. All but the biggest indie labels operate on the tightest of budgets, making substantial investments in bands they love, often with limited financial return.

These sorts of companies won’t be able to afford to re-press lost CDs until the insurers pay up, which could be months, which means they won’t have any records to sell for months, which means they won’t have an income for months, which could be enough to put some labels out of business.

With that in mind, it’s been great to see the wider record industry rally to help the small labels for whom the fire could prove fatal.

The UK’s record label trade body the BPI, which includes all the majors in its membership, have set up a fund, with monies from the bigger record companies and the trade organisation’s own operations, offering interest free loans to affected labels. The UK’s Association Of Independent Music has set up a similar loan fund, which various organisations and individuals have been supporting. All of which shows that out of something as negative as the London riots, something positive can come about.

And talking of which, AIM also encouraged music fans to buy downloads from tracks released by their favourite indie labels, because that income could be used to help them re-press their physical product.

And one label, Finders Keepers, has come up with an innovative way to make that process more fun. They’ve asked celebrity friends of the label – first up Jarvis Cocker from Britpop band Pulp – to put together special compilations from their catalogue, which are then available to buy for download. So, out all the negativity, comes something creative too.

There you go, an editorial which began with a paragraph of tragedy, and managed to end upbeat!

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This week is the tenth anniversary of the death of my good friend and fellow CMU founder Alastair Walker.

It’s really hard to believe a whole decade has now passed since we sat in an Islington warehouse plotting the future of all things CMU. The music policy and editorial attitude that stays with the publication to this day came very much from Alastair, and to mark this anniversary of his death I wanted to do something musical. And compiling a special tribute edition of the CMU Powers Of 10 playlist seemed like a good way to do that. Here it is.

ALASTAIR WALKER’S TEN

Click here to listen to Chris’ Alastair Walker playlist in Spotify, and then read on to find out more about his selections.

INTRO: “Both Alastair and I shared a very eclectic taste in music, which I think has always been represented in CMU. Though Alastair’s passion for and commitment to discovering innovators in every genre of music on a daily basis surpassed mine and pretty much anyone else I’ve ever met. Representing those eclectic tastes in just ten tracks is no easy task, but it’s a rule we’ve enforced on everyone else who’s put together a Powers Of Ten playlist, and I’m sure Alastair wouldn’t want us to break the rules just for him. Well, actually, he probably would, but we’re not going to”.

01 William Shatner – You’ll Have Time
For reasons I never entirely fathomed, because this was before Shatner became cool again, Alastair was always a huge fan of the actor-come-singer-come-raconteur. In fact, a combined William Shatner/Leonard Nimoy album was always sitting next to the office stereo at CMU HQ. However, I’ve picked a track from Shatner’s more recent album, ‘Has Been’, rather than from that CD. Partly because it means I can include a nod to Ben Folds, another favourite of both mine and Alastair’s, who produced this album and track.

It might seem unusual to open a playlist marking the anniversary of someone’s death with a track that takes such a flippant attitude towards people dying, but as well as sharing eclectic tastes in music, we also had in common a rather dark sense of humour, and I am certain that Alastair would love the fact that his playlist opens this way.

02 Queen and David Bowie – Under Pressure
If there was one artist above all other that Alastair truly admired it would be Bowie. Actually, he’d hate me for choosing this track as the token Bowie appearance. He’d have probably chosen something from one of the BBC Radio Sessions. But this enables me to get Queen onto the playlist too, which I want to do because I remember Alastair’s mum telling me, not long after he died, how Queen were one of the few bands on which she and he could agree. Freddie Mercury et al were not a band Alastair raved about in public very much, but the way they frequently experimented with their sound would certainly have appealed to him. And all the more on the day Bowie was involved.

03 Stereophonics – Have A Nice Day
A band Alastair was behind from day one, initially as a student radio head of music in Edinburgh, and later as Co-Editor of CMU. Kelly et al returned the favour by writing us a column for a year in the early days of the magazine. We played this track at the end of Alastair’s funeral, knowing he would have wanted something upbeat despite the sadness of the occasion. Though as a result every time I hear this track, even though it’s probably the Stereophonics most cheerful song, it makes me a little bit sad.

04 Garbage – I Think I’m Paranoid
I have a theory that every Scottish male has a soft spot for Shirley Manson. Certainly I know a lot of Scots with very diverse music tastes who would still put Garbage on the list of their top ten favourite bands. I’m not Scottish, but I did live there for four years, which is possibly why, like Alastair, I do like a bit of Garbage.

05 UNKLE feat Richard Ashcroft – Lonely Souls
I remember the first time Mo’Wax Records bought an advert in CMU. Alastair was very excited. And not because it meant we were some way closer to breaking even on that issue but because he was such a big fan of everything James Lavelle had ever been involved in. I’m not sure Alastair could have picked just one track off ‘Psyence Fiction’ to feature here, but personally this is my favourite.

06 Public Enemy – Don’t Believe The Hype
Talking about Alastair being excited, if I told you just how big a fan he was of the late 80s American hip hop scene, and Public Enemy in particular, can you imagine how happy he was the day Chuck D agreed to supply a regular column for CMU? If I’m being honest, as the person who had to sub-edit that column, I frequently didn’t understand a word of what he was saying. But somehow his almost poetic use of words was still awe-inspiring. Frankly, you could put any Public Enemy track into this playlist and Alastair would be happy, but I’ve chosen the crowd pleaser.

07 MIA – 10 Dollar
Right, given Alastair’s constant passion for new music, we ought to get some newer acts into this playlist. That is to say, artists who have emerged since his death. All I’ll say about Ms Arulpragasam is that if Alastair had ever prepared a checklist of what he wanted from a new artist, she would have ticked every box.

08 Sleigh Bells – Tell Em
Bringing us even more up to date, another band I’m sure Alastair would have been raving about is Sleigh Bells, who are coincidentally signed to MIA’s label. Like our columnist Eddy Temple-Morris, who first hooked up with CMU when Alastair interviewed him, he loved it when people made electronic music with a rock, or almost a metal, mentality. Of course that means there’s been a lot of music in the last ten years that Alastair would have highly rated – basically anything Eddy’s ever played on ‘The Remix’ – but there’s something so in your face about how this Sleigh Bells track opens, I think it deserves its slot in this playlist.

09 Faith No More – Smaller And Smaller
Alongside Bowie and Chuck D, the other musical innovator Alastair had particular time for was Mike Patton. So much so, we are possibly the only magazine basically aimed at a mainstream music audience to have featured Fantomas on our cover (back when we had a cover). But here I’m going to go with Patton’s most famous band, because you can’t beat a bit of classic Faith No More.

10 Rage Against The Machine – Killing In The Name
As someone who had been active on the world wide web from almost the first day it existed, it’s a shame Alastair never got to really experience the social media revolution, which he used to predict so frequently in the late 1990s. If he had been alive to see the day Rage Against The Machine beat the ‘X-Factor’ franchise to the Christmas number one slot via a carefully orchestrated Facebook campaign, I suspect he would have laughed for a week. The fact that it was one of his favourite bands who were chosen to defeat the pop machine would have made him happier still.

So, are you guys all hooked up with Spotify yet? If you are, and you like your metal, prepare yourself for a little disappointment. One of the leading metal independent labels, Century Media, this week announced they were pulling their content from the streaming platform, just week’s after its long awaited US launch, because, they said, the advertising and subscription funded service is not the “way forward”.

They add that the relatively meagre royalties paid by Spotify to labels and artists are not worth it when compared to the negative impact Century reckons having its music on the streaming platform has on more lucrative record sales. Having your content on Spotify, the label concluded, “accelerates the downward spiral”.

Spotify responded yesterday, stressing that many of the people using their service had already stopped buying music before they switched to the streaming platform; many, of the Napster generation, had never paid for music. The message – the royalties paid by Spotify for every play of a track may be modest, but it’s new revenue generated from consumers who would not otherwise buy a label’s music. Former file-sharers turned into music consumers.

They added that “Spotify is now generating serious revenues for rights holders; since our launch just three years ago, we have paid over $100 million to labels and publishers, who, in turn, pass this on to the artists, composers and authors they represent. Indeed, a top Swedish music executive was recently quoted as saying that Spotify is currently the biggest single revenue source for the music industry in Scandinavia. We are very proud of the positive contribution that Spotify makes towards growth in the music industry”.

There is similar paranoia in various parts of the record industry, that signing up to the next big thing in digital music, while seemingly profitable in the short term, could have a negative impact on another service or revenue stream. So, I might get new money from streaming service X, but if download sales on service Y go down as a result, then I might be worse off. And what if service X puts service Y out of business, but then it turns out service X doesn’t add up long term, and they shut down too? Certainly there’s some difficult decisions to be made.

That said, if I had a label I’d be doing deals with everyone offering something vaguely feasible. It’s not always the best approach, but in the unpredictable new music business having a finger in every pie seems, for now, the best option.

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I am writing this to you from a very damp but very excitable Edinburgh in Scotland.

Damp because of that summer rain that falls so frequently round here. Excitable because the world’s largest arts festival – the Edinburgh Festival Fringe – officially gets underway tomorrow. In fact, the previews began last night.

I’m here because, in my secret other life, I edit ThreeWeeks, the biggest review media at the world’s biggest cultural party. We have 85 young reviewers from all over the UK and beyond ready to review, between them, over 1750 shows over the next 21 days. We’ll publish their reviews at ThreeWeeks.co.uk.

There are over 2500 shows in the Fringe this year, and that’s before you count the other festivals that also take place in Edinburgh. It’s called the “biggest” for a reason, you know. As you can imagine, if you come here as an audience member, navigating a programme of 2500+ shows is no easy task. And that’s where ThreeWeeks comes in.

We see 100s more shows than any other media, and we do that because it’s only by review organisations like ours going out of way to find the exciting new talent, probably performing in the back room of a bar, that the wider world gets to find out about those stars of the future. We help ticket buyers navigate the mass of culture on offer here.

Of course there’s a parallel with Inside Track here, isn’t there? Every day hundreds, if not thousands, of artists post new tracks, videos, blogs and other stuff to the internet. How are you, the busy music fan, meant to find the really cool stuff, some of which is playing in the internet equivalent of the back room of a bar? Inside Track is your guide.

And I am realising just how important that service is first hand this week. Usually I’m sitting in the middle of the Inside Track operation so have my finger on the pulse, as it were, on all things new music. But for these four weeks, surrounded as I am by a barrage of theatre and music, my direct link to new music is down. Making these ten links put together by my good colleagues back in HQ all the more important.

In fact, I have 20 rare minutes of down time here in Edinburgh right now. I’m going to go listen to all these links myself. Let’s go and enjoy them together.

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So here’s a question for you, do you spend your evenings locked in your bedroom enjoyed music videos on your cellphone?

According to music video service VEVO, an increasing number of young people – especially guys – are glued to their mobiles every night, tapping into short-form content, music videos and, presumably, though VEVO’s research didn’t look into this, the occasional game.

According to the video site’s Mobile Attitudes & Usage study, VEVO delivered 85 million video streams in May alone do the 7.5 million people who have downloaded their smartphone apps. 48% of mobile users are aged between 18 and 24, 66% are male, and the average user spends 53 minutes a month using the VEVO app, most commonly in their bedroom.

Of course VEVO, the ad-funded YouTube-powered music video platform owned and run by two of the major record companies, have a vested interest in convincing brands looking to reach young people that TV ads or, even, banners on traditional websites are no longer of any use. But in this post-iPhone era I can believe the picture drawn by this research – of the young music fan, mainly looking to tap into quick and interactive content via their mobile – is increasingly accurate.

Personally I find this exciting. I’ve sat in meetings for the best part of ten years where we all agreed the future of music, and the wider entertainment business, was mobile. We foresaw a world where the cellphone would become the primary media platform and, even when a user chooses another bit of technology because of its bigger screen or better sound system, the cell would still drive the experience.

It took ten years for the technology to really catch up with the vision, and the music and entertainment worlds are still figuring out quite how this will work, what their apps should do, and how they make money from it all. But the optimist in me thinks that, now we are truly in the iPhone/Android age, a whole new digital revolution is about to begin, and this one could be even more exciting. So to conclude, Mr VEVO Guy, you’re probably the future.

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So, here’s a question for any aspiring bands out there – with Google+ fast gaining momentum, should artists be setting up a profile on the web giant’s new social networking platform? In the same way every band made the leap from MySpace to Facebook, should they now be looking to build a new presence on Google+?

Well, an expert called Bob Baker, writing on a website called Hypebot, says no. Not yet, anyway. Firstly because, for the time being at least, Google+ is restricted to individual subscribers who must sign up using their real names. Baker says that anyone setting up band profiles, or registering under a stage name, may well find their account is deleted by Google, which is keen to keep its new social network restricted to individual real people.

Baker also reveals that Google does have plans to allow businesses and brands to have a Google+ presence down the line, with a different kind of profile option which could be launched within the year. As these profiles are surely going to be more appropriate for performers, it’s possible musicians should hold off until said profiles are available, as there’s a high chance turning an individual profile into a brand/band profile at a later date won’t be easy.

Remember how artists set up personal Facebook profiles for fans, before discovering groups, and before Facebook finally launched its proper artist profile function? The message to bands is, don’t go through all the pain of setting up multiple profiles again.

Which means, I suppose, as music fans, while you might start making ‘circles’ with people who share your musical tastes, don’t expect to be following Justin or Gaga via Google+ just yet.

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I have a bit of a love hate relationship with award events, as you might have noticed with my recent ramblings about the VMAs and the UK’s Mercury Music Prize.

Part of me wonders what the point is of public-voted award events, because inevitably the bands we already know have the biggest fanbases are most likely to win. But then you have the expert-voted award shows, which either involve a large number of experts where you wonder if the pundits just vote for their friends’ projects, or a small number of experts in a room where you suspect one personable person can easily sway the vote totally in the direction of whoever they like (I’ve been in such a room, and both knowingly swayed my colleagues, or let myself be swayed, depending on my mood).

And then there is the issue of deciding who is eligible. More often than you probably realise, to be eligible for awards you have to put yourself forward. Which normally means spending time filling out some tedious form, and sometimes requires paying a fee. Which means if you win Best Artist, what that really means is you’re the best artist of those who could be bothered to enter. And of course when it comes to ‘lifetime achievement’ gongs, there is the suspicion prizes are really distributed based on who will give the awards event more glamour, as Fraser McAlpine remarks in this rather amusing blog on the BBC America website.

But then again, what’s wrong with a little back patting, even if the way winners are chosen is slightly flawed, or even suspect. And, of course, awards shows are great for the wider music industry, because they always generate lots of media interest both for winners and for stand out performances at the awards show, and that’s got to be in everyone’s interest.

And, of course, sometimes awards are genuinely heartfelt celebrations of someone’s achievements, artistic or otherwise. I’m particularly pleased the legendary Willie Nelson is about to be inducted into the Agricultural Hall Of Fame. It might sound like a crazy honor for the country veteran – previous inductees have included Thomas Jefferson and Isaac Newton – but the AHoF is honoring Nelson for his involvement in founding the Farm Aid movement which supports family run farms in America.

Says Nelson of the induction: “I am extremely honoured and humbled to join the company of the 38 prominent inductees already in the Agricultural Hall Of Fame. I have long said that family farmers are the backbone of our country. I never thought Farm Aid would need to be around as long as it has been, but we know our country needs family farmers, and Farm Aid will be here as long as family farmers need us”.

So awards, often flawed, occassionally suspect, but a great night out, a great platform for promoting music, and sometimes truly deserved.

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