Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash

M: back to the "problems with monthly mags" that we have - everything is old news! you have a choice of thousands of interviews of everyone online - bands have their own websites etc etc etc there's no point in magazines anymore - even weekly is too late for me. i suppose there are still people out there that aren't into the internet so much and are happy to pay stupid money to get the bullshit news people have copied from online anyways...but as times goes by, magazines ain't gonna exist anymore, at least not as we know them. if they want to survive, they're gonna have to come up with something else for us to pay for, just like bands are having to do.

J: > in magazines anymore - even weekly is too late for me
This, and everything you said
> if they want to survive, they're gonna have to come up with something else for us to pay for, just like bands are having to do.
I think they make money from tour sponsorship as well, since yeah,they're effectivly obsolete.

M: I think they make money from tour sponsorship as well, since yeah, they're effectively obsolete. yeah and online stores and shit...but i just can't see how long they're gonna hold out actually selling the magazine. even with them offering free cds and shit - as soon as the copy hits stores, it goes online straight away. any super amazing content they can come up with goes online straight away....there ain't anything magazines can do. except maybe go online, do it for free and make their money from advertising, same as nearly all online free press. i give em 10 years at best. i could check some of the figures here [at work], market research into the magazine industry would be pretty interesting - to see the figures and shit. in fact i might just do that :D

J: :D
> there ain't anything magazines can do. except maybe go online, do it for free and make their money from advertising
I was gonna suggest that, it's all they can really do..

M: well metal hammer are owned by future publishing and just from wiki the sales for MH are 49,143 from jan-jun 07 - before the recession stuff, so i imagine current figures are down from that - compared to vogue uk which has a circulation of 220,000 it's not doing so badly.

terrorizer does 13,786 - classic rock, 70,301 (figures for this from 2009)...

hmm... i dunno, when you think 49,143 x £4 (i'm assuming its about 4 quid) = £196,572 per month, so about £2,358,864 per year, not including special issues, the fact that it may cost over £4 and all the other merch and sponsorship.,...

okay they're making pretty sweet money from it. and MH is a pretty big name of the future publishing books - classic rock is bigger, but their magazines generally focus on specialist press so the MH figures are actually pretty good.

this was a more complicated email than i intially planned.

J: > this was a more complicated email that i intially planned.
I know :D
Classic Rock used to be really good - yeah, it's monthly and the news is old, but it had good interviews in it and other bits, as you say, it's specialist. MH and Terrorizor are more or less the same, with T being the less mainstream per say.
But yeah, they still seem to be doing okay, and i'm sure a lot ofpeople will still buy them, it's just the cheap fuckers like you and me that wont :D

M: > it's just the cheap fuckers like you and me that wont :D

LOL i guess thats true :) i guess i just get caught up in what i do - i just don't understand why there's so many people out there spending money on stuff they don't need to. i also don't understand why there's so many companies spending so much money on protecting material they won't be able to protect forever - i don't get why they don't spend the money finding ways that they can move with the times.

like with illegal downloading - how many milions of fucking pounds have been spent trying to stop it when its essentially impossible to stop? why don't they just realise that and save the fucking money they're throwing at an unsolveable problem - and think of the ways in which they make money outside selling the music itself.

itunes was genius in the sense that at first, you had to download stuff from itunes to be able to listen to it on a ipod - everyone has an ipod, so everyone uses itunes, it's brilliant for making money - although even that couldn't last.

J: > don't understand why there's so many people out there spending money on stuff they don't need to
This.
> like with illegal downloading - how many milions of fucking pounds have been spent trying to stop it when its essentially impossible to stop?
Yeah, they never will, but they can't seem to grasp that and just admit defeat and yeah, do shit to increase revenue.
But a lot of people still buy music. we might joke about it, but people still buy lots.

M: i think we're kinda out of touch with that - because me and you never do it, i forget that people do actually spend money on stuff. i think there are a lot of people that see you downloading stuff and figure that you're taking money away from that band and so damaging the thing you like, in that sense,

J: say, for example, you were buying metallica records from when they started - every album they released was wicked - that goes for pretty much any other band at the time - you just get album after album of good shit. now it's like, they never release anything that's even worth buying. downloading might be killing it, but they're effectively killing it themselves with content.
also, downloading music is free - yeah, it's not legal, but it's free... it's a no brainer really, huh.

M: totally. like...whichever blog it was the other day that was saying how in 1985 - you have about 300 metal albums recorded. and 90% of those are fucking cool. ffwd to 2009 - over 10,000 different releases - and a good 70% EASILY are fucking bullshit. you think i'm gonna want to pay with those odds?

J: also most bands still going are doing the music for the money, yeah, i know, that's obvious and people who want to make money from music can, it's fair game, but to release horseshit for the money is not fair.

M: if i download your album for free and i like it, then in turn, i'll pay to see you play. and if you're really fucking good, i'll buy a t-shirt or some other kind of merch and that way, you could get up to about £40 off me. times that by 200 people and you got 8000, right there. and most people who charge 20 for tickets and 20 for tshirts are playing bigger venues than 200 people. you think of the o2 (don't know why i'm all figures obsessed this evening) - if it seats about 23,000 people - if you charge £40 a ticket, that's £920,000 - then if even half of them buy a t-shirt at £25 a pop, that's an extra £287,200 - so you've already made over a million fucking quid.

J: Yeah, you'll still go see bands play. I think also it's why a lot of bands release ltd vinyls still, because there's still a market for it. Although i think vinyl is dollar to press though :
> you think of the o2 (don't know why i've got all figures obsessed this evening)
Yeah, I thought that when i opend this email ;)
O2 is making bear cash tho :/

M: well with vinyl, you're selling something there that people can't just do themselves and its something that's actually cool - you can have pictures and fold outs and stuff. if you made a cd that came with some insanely awesome case* or whatever, yeah i'd still buy that, like people always buy box sets that come with some cool kind of crappy merch.

>O2 is making bear cash tho :/

fuck yeah, considering that most of their events are easily £40 upwards to go to - the foods costs DOLLAR, the shops/restaurants have to pay rent etc etc etc the o2 are fucking made, that place makes people haemorrhage money :O

*I hate AC/DC...but props to whoever came up with this. It's an undeniably cool cool idea to make some cash.

Lameness

M: http://www.metalhammer.co.uk/news/metal-big-brother-day-1/

1. LOL @ vikernes vikernes. dummies!

2. this is one of the most pointless pieces of tripe MH have come up with so far

J: what the fuck!!!! >_O

M: i know, srsly, is there no end to the crap they come out with?

J: someone commented that it was full of win.
it just kinda distances me from people that claim to like metal but think all this stuff is cool. it's not, it's lame. these are the sort of "individuals" that claim to hate Big Brother as a rule, but a metal version? hey, that's okay, we don't mind.
yeah, fuck off!

M: it is full of LAME. people are full of talk, what they mean is that they'd love big brother if it was people they're interested in.

i'm torn between thinking that people who think everything should be in some way metal related are retards or just big metal fans and that's okay?

i.e. at first i was thinking that "ohh people who try and make everything metal or want everything to be metal are lame" YET - thats pretty much me and you. we play metal who is, we went to see razzle's grave, we want to go to festivals and have metal holidays, we dress...not normally, however you want to describe it (i look like a magician today!), we read books about metal, talk about metal, go to metal pubs - its our hobby and we're really into it. people who like golf wear golf clothes, go to golf bars and would like big brother if it was made up of golfers... :???

J: yeah, but we don't think, "oh, it's be cool to have a metal BB" or"Metal sports", or a "Metal Soap Opera" or anything like that.

M: yeah that is true. so is that where the line is drawn?

J: between us and them? we might like metal to a fanatic level, but we keep some order to it. these people take it overboard and do horseshit like a metal bb, guitar hero and take metal into the commercial stakes where it shouldn't be.

M: ahh. so is part of the reason why we like it because we enjoy it's non commercial status. and altho we complain there's no good metal anywhere - is it really just that as soon as something gets big we hate it...catch 22 etc. sunnnnnn being a perfect example.

J: i've always hated metal being in the mainstream. this is the issue i have with classic rock for going away from a specialist magazine to a regular mag to cater for the fact that people are now into rock music.
> it really just that as soon as something gets big we hate it...catch 22 etc. sunnnnnn being a perfect example.
this. i was gonna say what you said last night but forgot when we were talking about Southern Lord. sunn is a great example of a band i liked that i hate because they're got big in such a way. but maiden is big, and we love them, but it's the way it happens. bands now that get big start to sell themselves out.
you think of bands that have never gone mainstream still are cool, like seth and anal cunt.

M: thats a good point - the way they get big. riding on hipster coat tales and becoming people they're not....or building bigger and bigger effigies of eddie.... i like metal because its what i like - and it doesn't bother me that much if a band get really famous or not - but you're right, it would bother me if they changed so they could be famous or if they started to do things differently as a result of the fame. for one thing, they wouldn't be the band i liked anymore and also because it would show up their lack of integrity...

J: > or building bigger and bigger effigies of eddie....
eh :?
the thing with sunn is that they're still doing the same shit, metallica changed, maiden never (well, they got a new singer), motley never changed (see maiden), etc etc. so you kinda see the bands we still like opposed to the next band.

M: sunn getting famous is them doing gay interviews and posing for photoshoots and charging a million pounds to get into the same shows they were doing before they got big.

iron maiden getting famous is them building super awesome giant eddies and putting on a show that's actually worth £50 to get into. they didn't change, they remained the same band, just super rich and they used it to do awesome cool things and it just made their fans love them more.

metallica changed - i still don't believe they changed due to the fame, but without a doubt and whatever caused it they turned sucky.

It descends from there on into us being rude about Metallica: one of our favourite ways to pass the time.

But points well made (esp the ones by me obvz): what do you think divides us awesomely cool people from posers? Is there really anything between us? Metal has traditionally been populated by outcasts and rebels...but by seeking to define what is cool and what isn't, it seems we still yearn for some kind of validation. After rejecting one culture because we didn't fit in, we're creating the same sort of elitism in a place that was originally set away from that social hierarchy.

When I'm in a good mood - nice and peaceful - I like to think that Metal is music that doesn't care who you are or what you look like...but more often than not, that's just not the case and it never has been. From the very beginning "being cool" was a big deal.

Weird Constellations

Right, so I'm kicking off the year by telling you what you SHOULD be listening to. I dictate very rarely (on this website, at least) but sometimes...well, to be honest, I just want someone to talk to about it. There isn't even a review on Metal Archives yet!

I've never heard of Damned Spirits Dance before, but when it first came to our attention, me and J knew I was going to be up for it:

J: Damned Spirits Dance - Weird Constellations
> Genre: Melodic/Atmospheric Black Metal - Electronic - Power Metal
:::::::::::::?

M: looks/sounds mental, you listen to it?

J: nah :)

M: i think i might :D

J: i bet you'll like it :)

M: i bet i will too :D i hope i do anyways, i fancy something new.

I won't put up the whole conversation; from there we just made fun of the cover (top picture) and went on to complain about various other ills.

Fast forward this story to today and OMG how I love that album! It's truly deranged: the 11 tracks loop wildly in and out of different genres, styles and tempos. Metal Archives labels them as melodic black metal, which doesn't do them any justice at all.

Across the album, you can pick up strong death metal riffs, black metal sections, but the techno, dance and electronica element is just as strong. It's also something that makes this album stand out from a million other standard releases.

Reviews suck and I'm not great at them at the best of times, so I won't go on - I just urge you to give this one a try. You might not like it, but I think everyone ought to hear this record at least once anyway, just for the experience.