It’s long been obvious that for this creature named “environmentalism” to really fly, it’s mostly going to need businesses to help. As Maclean’s dourly pointed out a couple issues back, even if every American home switched to energy-saving lightbulbs, the effect would immediately be wiped out by two new medium-sized coal plants—and China is building one a week.
For years now, Universal Music has sent out heavy media packages to industry folks, fat with book-sized photocopies of upcoming releases. One new release per page, full of marketing details and guesses as to what the final cover art of upcoming CDs might look like. When I was substitute rock writer for the Sun for almost a year, I never wanted for scrap paper, but sadly recycled most of this mountainous marketing information. Now imagine something heftier than Chatelaine coming in every week, but to every newspaper, record store, and radio station across various continents. You could build a house out of it in a day, never mind what kind of lightbulbs you screw inside it.
Local Universal rep John Dunham is personally putting a stop to this waste. “In order to save a few trees, I’m going to discontinue servicing paper versions of our new release books and simply notify you via e-mail when they are up on our umusicbiz.ca website,” he wrote in a recent e-mail. “I took it upon myself to make that choice.”
Awesome news, and more than a few trees are thankful. Hopefully it’ll catch on with the whole company.
Seeing as we’re already talking about one of the last labels to survive the Great Digital Purge, there’s unfortunately bad news coming out of Universal Music Group, too. Down in California, UMG—through the extremely litigious industry body RIAA—is suing an online used-CD seller, specifically because he’s moving third-hand promo CDs around for cash. They already got him shut down on eBay, even though they had no legal right to do so.
The company contends that promo discs are intended for only one purpose—promotion—and the warning stickers prove it. But it turns out that if a label sends anyone a promo, it’s actually illegal to expect anything in return. The stickers are moot. That’s why a more shady company can’t send you something you didn’t ask for, then bill you. It means whoever gets the discs in the first place has total, legal rights to the object. It’s considered a gift. And this poor eBay seller is even further detached.
But now, Universal contends the opposite, saying that you aren’t even allowed to throw away unwanted CDs. The only place this type of exchange makes sense is Goblin Law in Harry Potter. In J.K. Rowling’s world, goblins believe that the maker of an artistic object maintains an ongoing ownership interest in that object even after it is sold, and is entitled to get it back when the purchaser dies. It’ll be an interesting battle. Meanwhile, in the muggle universe...
Calling all music nerds: Raymond Biesinger, with a little help from me, you, and everyone we know, is compiling a beautiful, completist chart of Edmonton’s entire indie history at www.fifteen.ca/thechart. If you want to put in your two cents (or obscure references to bands from three decades ago like One Horse Blue), head to the site and check what he’s got first. I’ve been working all afternoon collecting data, and can’t wait to wrap this thing as a poster around my house. Good job, Ray!
We love nibble-sized concert reviews around here, and this week Electricity for Everybody! wins. The small crowd in Velvet Underground was pretty much floored by the level of sophistication, style, and clarity of this indie rock band, and I don’t know if Brent Oliver’s ever sound-mixed an act so perfectly. With disparate dueling vocalists brilliantly harmonizing, their stage presence alone was soul-savingly natural.
There are too many bands out there who twitch and pose like they’re playing “the band” in a Fringe play; it’s self-serving shit. E4E! should be studied by all of them. Plus, the guys write better songs than most everyone in town. They’re Guided by Voices good. Make sure you see them soon, friends.
