As some of you may have heard, I’ve been working on a solo album this year, and I’m happy to say it is now available for enjoyment by humans. The album is called 800 Memories Per Second and it’s a collection of mostly live improvisations recorded over a period of two years or so.

The album should appeal to fans of the more ambient side of Älymystö.

Here’s where it resides. It’s available as a free download and under a Creative Commons license, so feel free to spread the word and/or the files. Do it now.

(Also feel free to follow me on Twitter or on Facebook.)

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ITEM! 19:38:00 by ATYD/Älymystö will be coming out on vinyl in May. The graphics look damn nice.

The split release with And Then You Die is finally up on Spotify. Took three months, but hopefully it was worth the wait.

Click here to listen. Spread the word far and wide.

Now it’s finally official: Älymystö / And Then You Die split album titled 19:38:00 will be released in 24th of December as a digital download. The album will be available in iTunes Music Store, Nokia Music Store, Spotify and selected other on-line services right in time to offer you some easy listening for the Christmas Eve. If you are more into large discs and diamond needles than download services, you’ll have to wait a bit longer: the collectors edition picture disc will be released in 1st of April 2010.

We will also be on tour in the beginning of the year and you’ll be seeing and hearing us in both Finland and Baltic countries. More information incoming as soon as we nail down the exact dates and venues.

Meanwhile check out this ad / mood piece of the oncoming record, made by Skithund Records:

An article regarding Spotify payments has been making the rounds in Finland over the past few days. According to the article the Finnish record label Sakara has received a whopping 31,40 euros from 118 119 streamed songs, and they are somewhat understandably upset. 0,027 cents per one streaming of one song isn’t exactly even a micropayment.

Here’s the thing, tough. I have yet to see any figures on what Spotify (a service currently in BETA, no less) is actually making at the moment, and what percentage of their earnings are being forwarded to the labels/artists. The article didn’t include a single word regarding the difference between a download and streaming models, either.

Certainly Spotify should be getting a lot more transparent with regard to its profit sharing model these days, but in its current form, this is just Bad Journalism and simplistic populism. Now, if Jonathan From Spotify is currently well on his way to making his first million, I’ll change my tune. Something tells me he’s still got a ways to go.

ETA: Here’s the original article, in Finnish. I didn’t even want to link to it to begin with, but there you have it in all its glory.

So, we have good news for all of you Spotify fans out there. As of today, our full length album Atomgrad is available in Spotify, so just click here and tune in.

Right now our latest publication, a split vinyl EP, is still in the production line, but things are certainly moving forward. Also, we have a new tour coming up, so stay tuned!

From the point of view of the consumers Spotify has been the only music service out there that can really complete with piracy on the ease of use, the amount of music available and of course, the price. There have been some random grumbling especially from the old school artist front, but now a Swedish artist called Magnus Uggla launched a rather scathing attack on Spotify in his blog. Since my Swedish is nonexistent, I’m relying on the article in TorrentFreak for translation:

Writing on his blog he says that Spotify is a really incredible, fantastic service which offers everything – for free too. But, he writes, it’s too good to be true. Like thousands of other artists, Uggla’s work is available via Spotify and, due to involvement of the major labels and a lack of involvement from the local torrent site operators, he of course expects to get paid a reasonable amount. Not so.

Uggla says that when he received his first earnings statement from Spotify it became apparent that he “earned as much in six months as a BUSKER could earn in a day.” Ouch.

Understandably upset, Uggla raised the issue in a long discussion with Sony boss Hasse Breitholtz but came away feeling that he should trust in the man and the service.

Ouch indeed. What was the last straw for Uggla was the last week’s revelation of the large record labels being actual shareholders of Spotify.

When it launched in October 2008, Spotify publicized music rights deals with Sony BMG Music, Universal Music, Warner Music, EMI and Merlin.

Behind the scenes, these five music companies were at that time made shareholders in Spotify. Combined, the record companies paid just €8,800 for an 18 percent share of Spotify’s stock, according to financial filings obtained by Computer Sweden from the Trade Register of Luxembourg, where Spotify is registered. Investments made this July, nine months later, have put Spotify’s market value at €193 million.

- The Industry Standard

The feeling of betrayal here is kind of understandable, although maybe misdirected. After all, the record companies and the industry have been hammering home the message that the artists should be compensated for the work they do, no matter what. It’s easy to see this stance reeking of hypocricy, when it’s revealed that the same companies are involved in a service that some artists think pays them peanuts.

Oh, by the way, who is this Uggla guy anyway? Some half-amateur whiner who didn’t strike it rich with his first album and who is all butthurt about it. Well, no – Magnus Uggla has been in the business since the 70′s and he seems to be kind of a high profile artist in Sweden. Then again, a long history and high profile doesn’t always mean high airplay and sales in the current times, and there aren’t actually any hard facts over the ratio of plays vs. royalties Uggla got from Spotify. So, let’s just operate under the assumption that it was somehow considerably less than he’s used to getting from traditional sources.

Referring to the valuation, Uggla questions how this company can do so well – and comes to the conclusion that it’s at the artist’s expense. He says that Sony Music, after “suing the shit out of The Pirate Bay” is acting just like them by not paying the artists.

So, the situation developes and this whole debacle raises interesting questions. I don’t think Uggla will be the only old school artist who’ll be a bit miffed about the Spotify royalties now that we know the service is partly owned by the big record industry. If Spotify was more or less independent from the big industry, I don’t suppose that many artists would mind the small royalties, at least initially. Hey, it’s a little bit of money from a lot of people who haven’t brought in any money earlier. Now the labels, who should be the artists’ knights in shining armour, can be seen as making millions covertly without compensating the artists properly and maybe even eating into their “proper” album sales. Another interesting twist is that essentially all the independent artists and labels involved in Spotify are now making money for the big industry.

Then again, 18% of the stock divided by five doesn’t sound like a whole lot of actual decision power, but it helps to explain how Spotify’s been able to get such an extensive catalogue of music. Also, principles and the record company hypocricy aside, the streaming subscription based services are still the only way to effectively fight piracy right now, and the only way to get at least some money out of a demographic that wasn’t worth a dime earlier.

If an artist wants to pull his material out of a service like this out of a principle and settle for no money at all instead of little bit of money, that’s certainly his right. I would call that slightly stupid, but then again, principles hardly ever make that much sense. Then again, one might wonder if someone, who has been in the business for 30 years, might be a little set in his ways. The net has changed the rules, so keeping in control of every copy and second of airplay is impossible and one can’t expect radio-like royalties from all online services. Also I have this sneaking suspicion that there would be a whole lot of need to update the artist licencing contracts with the labels, both old and new ones.

The times are changing. Although I’ve said nice words about Spotify in here, it’s certainly not the all saving messiah of the music business – it’s just another great example of how the music distribution can work in the internet era. Nothing is perfect in the beginning and it takes a lot to hammer a century of extremely conservative business practice to fit into the new world.

A thing most people – even many artists – don’t know is that when you join a copyright organization such as the Finnish Gramex or Teosto or their counterparts in other countries, you most often lose the right to decide how you can use your own music. Everything has go through the organization, which have their own non-negotiable tariffs. This means you can’t let for example a hobbyist theatre or a small film use your music for free or a smaller fee – or, it seems, even upload your own videos to YouTube.

According to Spinner.com article the latter happened to a Scottish artist Calvin Harris. He uploaded his song ”Ready For The Weekend – Original Mix” to YouTube, but it was removed by British Phonographic Industry because of a copyright violation.

According to his Twitter Harris, who uploaded the song for promotional purposes, was less than happy – especially so when his videos uploaded by other people haven’t been removed. “The BPI are the worst organisation to ever walk the earth and their setup is shambolic and their online employees are all massive retards” isn’t maybe the most constructive analysis of the situation, but the frustration behind that is very understandable.

YouTube is an excellent platform for promoting an artist with music videos, but it’s still severely under utilized by the music industry. I mean, where the hell can you see videos of most bands? MTV? I don’t think so. On an expensive as fuck DVD? Don’t make me laugh.

There are just two choises here – get with the program or lose the game.

Well, no surprise there that it was too good to last. If you wonder where your favourite music vanished from Spotify, they are implementing region restrictions. So basically in the future you can listen only to music that has been licensed for your country.

This illustrates beautifully one of the current problems with media distribution and the industry model. Whereas the industry, labels, production companies etc. are living in a word divided into regions, the consumer increasingly is not. More and more heavy consumers of music, movies etc. are relying on different kinds of digital distribution methods. Thanks to the stubbornness of the industry this distribution used to be peer-to-peer -networks for a long time. But what does it mean in practice?

Well, having to rely on p2p systems has led into a generation of consumers, who’ve got used to a digital distribution system with very little limits. A network is global and everything is available everywhere. If an episode of your favourite TV program is aired somewhere in the world, in the next day it will be downloadable on the net – regardless of the country. If a band releases a new album, it’s out everywhere at the same time, not to mention the movies. In order to be viable, this is how the commercial digital distribution systems should work. Compared to using even the simplest p2p-system the region based distribution methods feel artificially constrained and clumsy.

A lot of music, TV and movie consumers would like to pay for the content, but currently it’s simply impossible, amongst other things because of region restrictions and region specific distribution rights. This is the crap which is keeping for example Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 video stores down in Europe – the mess with the distribution rights in different countries. The oldest and the most archaic example of this is DVD region coding. This is a thing that costs the publishers money in a very concrete way. A year or so ago I watched a couple of episodes of an excellent animation series called Invader Zim. Waving a figurative wad of bills in my hand I went online to try and order the series on dvd, but nope, no region 2 version available. So, that’s my money out of the pockets of the series creators and no chance for me to support them financially. Nope, unlike many of my friends I don’t have a region free DVD-player, and I’m not going to risk breaking my PS3 which I use to watch movies.

The stock answer from the industry and lobbyists to this artificial scarcity is that people should just learn to live with the fact that they can’t get the content they want to: “you can’t always get what you want”. But well… you do and it’s very simple. It’s just a matter of firing up your p2p client of choice and downloading what you want. Immediately, without any hassle with cumbersome DRM and unskippable propaganda. (The latter has kept me from buying the said box set, borrowed it from a friend instead.) Of course you can wish very hard that people are so moral and complacent that hey won’t do it because you tell them not to, but oh do come on. No matter how many single moms and schoolkids you bully with lawsuits, that’s not going to happen.

If the industry doesn’t want to sell content to people, content that’s freely available illegally, they don’t have the right to say word one to complain about piracy. They can spout their propaganda about how downloading is stealing until they are blue in the face and thrash around with their lawsuits, but in the end they are going to just sink deeper and deeper into irrelevancy. It shouldn’t be so hard to understand: you can’t tell people what they should want, you should sell stuff the consumers want to buy.

So, dear music, movie and TV-industry – take a close look at services like Spotify. Do your utmost to get rid of artificial region based restrictions and aim to have your services working like this in 5-10 years minimum. If you want to have region specific distribution rights, limit them to retail and physical copies. Otherwise you have lost the game, pure and simple.

It remains to be seen how long will I be personally subscribing to Spotify. I’m not going to cancel the subscription right away, but I’ll be keeping an eye on how much of my favourite music is dropped from the catalogue and are there any plans of bringing it back. Now, if ever, you should support services like this.

Exhibit B, your honour.

Last year Trent Reznor pulled a coup and released five CD’s worth of material for free under a CC license. The first batch of these was a four CD collection of instrumental material – not radio friendly pop to say the least.

So how’d that gambit work out?

In case you missed the it, Nine Inch Nails’ Ghosts I-IV became Amazon’s best selling mp3 album of 2008. It outsold the new Coldplay. (Radiohead, who also put their latest album up for free download for a limited time, came in at #11.)

I’d say the key to that success boils down to two things: visibility and a dedicated fanbase (or community). In the traditional model visibility is exactly what record companies provide — and fair enough, it’s what they’re good at and what their resources are geared to do. Whether this is actually necessary these days is another matter entirely.

In the field of fanbase or community building, NiN is again a prime example of the way it should be done. This live video project is a brilliant case. 400 GB of HD video footage shot and edited by fans, released for free with the consent of the band.

Point being: don’t bury that Long Tail enthusiasm just yet, it’s early days and we’ve work to do.

One of the mantras RIAA, MPAA and other nosy cunts keep bleating is “you can’t compete with free stuff” – meaning what if a consumer can get something for free, he doesn’t have any reason to buy it. Also those who claim that there are people who download things for free and then buy stuff they like are liars or just deluded hypocrites (hmm, I must be imagining half of my CD shelf and all the TV series DVD-boxes, some still in shrink wrap because I’ve already seen them as downloads but wanted to pay for good stuff…)

Ok, the logic in that mantra seems to be beautifully sound. If you get an album or a TV series for free from the net, why pay for it? The thing is, people are not logical and the mantra just doesn’t apply to the real world, which is far more complicated than the oversimplifications the copyright lobbyists love. Some people want to own physical copies of movies or albums, some just want to show their support by paying for stuff they find enjoyable. The notion that no-one would ever do the latter tells far more about the mindsets of the lobbyists than the mindsets of the fans & consumers.

A case in point, Monty Python on Youtube. You could find tons and tons of clips from Monty Python movies and the TV series in Youtube, so what did these merry gentlemen do? Went into a huff, demanded that Youtube has to take down the illegally shared clips & started suing their fans? Nope, instead of that they founded their own Youtube channel, where all the stuff is up for viewing for free and in HD quality. So, according to the copyright lobby logic, they could kiss their DVD sales goodbye?

Wrong. What happened was that their DVD sales rose by a measly 23 000%. At the same time a major study done in Netherlands (in Finnish) revealed that file sharing actually helps the Dutch economy by 100 million euros per year, file sharers don’t buy less stuff than the other people but instead visit more concerts and gigs and game downloaders buy more games than those who don’t pirate them.

The same thing happened with Star Wreck, of course. When it was released as a free download, many internet cynics predicted that it would mean the end of the DVD sales. Instead, they skyrocketed.

So, please, copyright lobbyists and the industry, stop with the stupid already. You have already managed to create one generation who views entertainment industry and artists as greedy cocks who are willing to ruin the lives of their consumers with overblown lawsuits just to make a point. Stop shooting yourself in the foot and get on with the programme. No matter how hard you wish it, you can’t return to the time when all the content was under your control and frankly, you shouldn’t even try.

Instead of staring at the next quarter, look a bit further. The 15 year old kid who now downloads the songs without paying for them is in 10 years a young adult in his first job. By downloading material he has got to know a ton of artists, movies, TV-series and other material he wouldn’t otherwise know about – and more likely than not, his buying power is just going to keep increasing. This works in the software industry too. For example Adobe doesn’t go around suing private persons for pirating Photoshop, Illustrator etc too diligently, since with their pirated copies people learn how to use the software and then make their employer buy it. Everybody wins.

Free distribution is free publicity. File sharing is here to stay and people are going to distribute your stuff no matter what you do – so why not capitalize on it by sharing the stuff the way you want it to be done and giving people an easy way to pay for the product? The only thing you have to lose is a ton of ill will springing from fighting the realities of the modern day.