After reading this article from Broadcast Magazine, it got us thinking:

Don’t demonise piracy, says IT Crowd creator

12 August, 2010 | By Ellie Broughton

Graham Linehan, the writer behind comedy The IT Crowd, has said the entertainment industry is gambling with its future by “ignoring or criminalising” the issue of piracy. Speaking at a debate on piracy last night, Linehan said the current response to online pirates was unrealistic and aggressive.

“It seems a bit like the big corporations are saying, ‘put down the gun or I’ll stab you’,” he said. “The discussion at the moment is not particularly …

Announcing our new Revolver Digital Store, in collaboration with Friend For Music!

As part of our longstanding commitment to music, we have always been at the forefront of new developments in the industry.

Be it Direct Metal Mastering and releasing music on the (then-new) CD format in the 1980s or our support of the first mass market music services in the early 2000s. Today, we continue to release CDs and make increasing amounts of our catalogue available for instant purchase or via one of the many streaming services, satisfying the shifting customer demand we have witnessed over the past decade.

Like many other indie labels, we have no illusions as to the state of the music industry – whilst revenues began to decline in the 1990s, that decline has no doubt been accelerated by the widespread availability of copyrighted music via the Internet. For all the inches of copy, coverage and layoffs in the “Big Four” labels, it has directly hurt independent labels to a far greater extent. And not only that, but artists have felt the pinch too – for labels releasing new material, it’s more important than ever to preserve the integrity of a release prior to its full release whilst still offering promotional copies to radio stations, journalists and selected individuals.

As you may have seen on Hypebot or NME.com this week, the BPI’s final summary of 2009 music industry figures have been released and it’s ‘a mixed bag.’

The gory details:

* Total UK recorded music trade income rises 1.4% overall to £928.8m
* Trade revenues from physical formats down 6.1% to £739.9m
* Digital income now a fifth of total recorded music revenues – up 47.8% to £188.9m

The main observation: digital sales have offset the losses accrued in physical sales, leaving not a very large margin of growth at all. Forrester Research usually provide their insight into BPI stats and figures, and once again they’re on hand for an expert opinion…

Following on from our Gogoyoko deal earlier this year, we’re now pushing ahead with new agreements with MediaNet (suppliers to many of the highstreet digital stores and Tesco Digital, amongst others), HDTracks (a specialist vendor with a heavy focus on High Definition audio and 24bit/96kHz high resolution recordings) and LoudTrax – a rock and metal specialist. (Their list of subgenres is incredible!)

Once upon a time, the major labels controlled the charts absolutely with an iron fist. Radio stations only playlisted tracks from major labels, payola was rife and pluggers knew the station controllers on a first name basis, they were in their offices so frequently.

Today, the major labels control the charts, but independence is slowly making itself felt. Radio stations still really only playlist tracks from major labels, but even with the passing of John Peen there are still some notable torchbearers for new, fresh and independent music (think Zane Lowe et al). Payola? Well, it’s still probably there to an …

Although the latest BPI statistics show that an all-time record of 98.6% of all UK single sales were digital (over 117 million!), the digital world has not fully divorced itself from its history in the real world.

If you’re an artist selling your music online, you still need the essentials – EAN13 barcode, catalogue number and (most importantly) an ISRC for each track, or you simply cannot have your tracks on any of the major online stores. (As a label with 30 years’ operating experience and almost a thousand albums under our belt, this irony’s not lost on us!)

However, unless you work with them on a daily basis, ISRCs can look confusing. How are they made up? What do they mean – and what purpose do they serve? In the first of our Industry Insider articles, Revolver explains it all – read on to find out.

… We know. We’re too good to you people. “What,” we can hear you say, ‘Revolver Digital gives me free barcodes AND Free ISRCs AND doesn’t charge me to upload my music to iTunes?” Yep, you got it. We don’t charge for any of that good stuff.

If you went elsewhere, you might be out of pocket to the tune of almost £100 before you even got started if you requested those features with another company. Plus, how do you know that they won’t just take your money and run? Some companies even charge a yearly fee just for “storage and …

Hopefully you won’t have noticed (because our resident codemonkey and geek was so brutally efficient) but the Revolver Digital site has moved webhosts. Things like page load times should be drastically reduced for our visitors – it was getting a little ridiculous before.

If you have any problems with the web site in the next 48 hours, please let us know.

For many bands, marketing their material to record labels is one of the most gruelling things they have to do (aside from gigging!) Here at Revolver Towers, we get tens and hundreds of demo packages every week – we have boxes full of them – and unfortunately we don’t always have time to actually open and listen to the music.

You’ll find this situation at labels all round the country – and the larger the label, the less time you will have to make an impression on whoever’s listening to …

Spotify

We’ve just negotiated yet another contract, this time, with the guys from Spotify! You’ll be able to select whether you wish to opt in to a service such as spotify. Spotify is one of the latest (and greatest) free music shops around where the artists get paid from advertisement revenue. The industry is changing and we’re all over it. They have just confirmed the majors have been signed up. You will want your music on here! We’ve got the contact before they’ve even launched.

Make sure …