Monday, August 27, 2012
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Saturday, August 18, 2012
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
PUSSY RIOT FUROR: The global campaign to free Pussy Riot is coming to Toronto.
Supporters of the punk provocateur band will mobilize this week in at least a two dozen cities worldwide to hold simultaneous demonstrations an hour before a Russian court rules on whether its members will be sent to prison.
On Friday, activists from Moscow to Toronto are expected to take to the streets at 2 p.m. Moscow time (6 a.m. Eastern), an hour before the judge is to issue the verdict. The protests are being co-ordinated by the defence lawyers.
Venues vary from the square outside the ornate Sagrada Familia Cathedral in Barcelona to the yard outside the Russian Embassyin London and Toronto.
Friday’s rallies will ride a wave of support for the three women who have been in jail for more than five months because of an anti-Putin prank in Moscow’s main cathedral. Calls for them to be freed have come from a long list of celebrities such as Madonna and Bjork. Protests have been held in a number of Western capitals, including Berlin, where last week about 400 people joined Canadian electro-pop performance artist Peaches to support the band.
In one of the most extravagant displays, Reykjavik Mayor Jon Gnarr rode through the streets of the Icelandic capital in a Gay Pride parade this weekend dressed like a band member — wearing a bright pink dress and matching balaclava — while lip-synching to one of Pussy Riot’s songs.
Amnesty International has called the women prisoners of conscience and begun collecting signatures by text message for a petition to be sent to the Russian government, while the U.S. State Department has repeatedly expressed its concern.
Although the band members and their lawyers are convinced that the verdict depends entirely on the will of President Vladimir Putin, and prosecutors have asked for a three-year sentence, activists hope their pressure will ease punishment or even free the women.
Putin has said the women should not be judged too harshly, but he risks appearing weak if they walk free.
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alekhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich were little known before their brief impromptu performance in Christ the Savior Cathedral in February. Dancing and high-kicking, they shouted the words of a “punk prayer” asking the Virgin Mary to deliver Russia from Putin, who was set to win a third term in a March presidential election.
They were arrested on charges of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred, which carries a maximum sentence of seven years. Since then, they have been vilified by the state media — while winning over hearts abroad.
Madonna donned a balaclava during a concert in Moscow last week and had “Pussy Riot” written on her bare back. Yoko Ono sent a personal message to Samutsevich, saying that “the power of your every word is now growing in us.”
A group of leading British musicians, including Pete Townshend of the Who and members of the Pet Shop Boys, published a letter in the Times of London ahead of Putin’s visit during the Olympics to urge him to give the Pussy Riot members a fair hearing.
In Paris, the protest will be held on Stravinsky Square and led by 29-year-old Alexey Prokopyev from Russie-Libertés, a Paris-based organization formed in December to bring together Russians studying or working in France.
“Most people go to these rallies in Paris because we cannot be in Russia at the moment for various reasons — because of jobs, classes,” said Prokopyev, who was born in the Soviet Union and has spent most of the past 17 years in France. “We all wish we were in Moscow now, but since we can’t we do it in Paris.”
Russie-Libertés also is helping to organize rallies in Marseille, Nice, Lyons and Montpellier.
Wearing balaclavas, activists protested earlier this month on the iconic Alexander III bridge, named after the Russian czar who was France’s ally in the 1890s.
Prokopyev said that he and his peers “want Russia to be a normal country” and be able to elect a president “who doesn’t make the country where we were born a laughingstock.”
In New York, Friday’s protest will take place outside the Russian Consulate and later on Times Square.
“It’s absurd that this case is being treated as criminal, while in any other civilized country that would be merely an administrative offence,” said Xenia Grubstein, a 31-year-old journalist helping to organize the New York protest.
She said the hope was that the louder people speak out against the Pussy Riot case, the greater the chance that the verdict will be fair.
A protest is also planned in Washington, where last month punk rockers and arts activists rallied outside the Russian Embassy.
The U.S. State Department has expressed concern about what it called the “politically motivated prosecution of the Russian opposition and pressure on those who express dissenting views.”
In France, Culture Minister Aurelie Filippetti last week issued a statement expressing concern that artistic freedom was on trial.
A German cross-party group of lawmakers sent a letter to the Russian ambassador calling the five months the band members have spent in custody and the possible prison terms “draconian and disproportionate” punishment.
“In a secular and pluralistic state, peaceful artistic activities — even if they may be seen as a provocation — should not lead to accusations of a serious crime and long prison sentences,” the lawmakers said in the letter, which more than 100 members of parliament signed.
The international press has been full of critical reports from the trial. One of Germany’s most influential magazines, Der Spiegel, featured the band on its cover: a picture of Tolokonnikova behind bars and the headline “Putin’s Russia.”
===
Greg Keller in Paris and David Rising in Berlin contributed to this report.
ALSO FROM THE WEB:
Pussy Riot punks Russia’s rulers
Pussy Riot gets support from Canadian pop star Peaches
On Friday, activists from Moscow to Toronto are expected to take to the streets at 2 p.m. Moscow time (6 a.m. Eastern), an hour before the judge is to issue the verdict. The protests are being co-ordinated by the defence lawyers.
Venues vary from the square outside the ornate Sagrada Familia Cathedral in Barcelona to the yard outside the Russian Embassyin London and Toronto.
Friday’s rallies will ride a wave of support for the three women who have been in jail for more than five months because of an anti-Putin prank in Moscow’s main cathedral. Calls for them to be freed have come from a long list of celebrities such as Madonna and Bjork. Protests have been held in a number of Western capitals, including Berlin, where last week about 400 people joined Canadian electro-pop performance artist Peaches to support the band.
In one of the most extravagant displays, Reykjavik Mayor Jon Gnarr rode through the streets of the Icelandic capital in a Gay Pride parade this weekend dressed like a band member — wearing a bright pink dress and matching balaclava — while lip-synching to one of Pussy Riot’s songs.
Amnesty International has called the women prisoners of conscience and begun collecting signatures by text message for a petition to be sent to the Russian government, while the U.S. State Department has repeatedly expressed its concern.
Although the band members and their lawyers are convinced that the verdict depends entirely on the will of President Vladimir Putin, and prosecutors have asked for a three-year sentence, activists hope their pressure will ease punishment or even free the women.
Putin has said the women should not be judged too harshly, but he risks appearing weak if they walk free.
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alekhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich were little known before their brief impromptu performance in Christ the Savior Cathedral in February. Dancing and high-kicking, they shouted the words of a “punk prayer” asking the Virgin Mary to deliver Russia from Putin, who was set to win a third term in a March presidential election.
They were arrested on charges of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred, which carries a maximum sentence of seven years. Since then, they have been vilified by the state media — while winning over hearts abroad.
Madonna donned a balaclava during a concert in Moscow last week and had “Pussy Riot” written on her bare back. Yoko Ono sent a personal message to Samutsevich, saying that “the power of your every word is now growing in us.”
A group of leading British musicians, including Pete Townshend of the Who and members of the Pet Shop Boys, published a letter in the Times of London ahead of Putin’s visit during the Olympics to urge him to give the Pussy Riot members a fair hearing.
In Paris, the protest will be held on Stravinsky Square and led by 29-year-old Alexey Prokopyev from Russie-Libertés, a Paris-based organization formed in December to bring together Russians studying or working in France.
“Most people go to these rallies in Paris because we cannot be in Russia at the moment for various reasons — because of jobs, classes,” said Prokopyev, who was born in the Soviet Union and has spent most of the past 17 years in France. “We all wish we were in Moscow now, but since we can’t we do it in Paris.”
Russie-Libertés also is helping to organize rallies in Marseille, Nice, Lyons and Montpellier.
Wearing balaclavas, activists protested earlier this month on the iconic Alexander III bridge, named after the Russian czar who was France’s ally in the 1890s.
Prokopyev said that he and his peers “want Russia to be a normal country” and be able to elect a president “who doesn’t make the country where we were born a laughingstock.”
In New York, Friday’s protest will take place outside the Russian Consulate and later on Times Square.
“It’s absurd that this case is being treated as criminal, while in any other civilized country that would be merely an administrative offence,” said Xenia Grubstein, a 31-year-old journalist helping to organize the New York protest.
She said the hope was that the louder people speak out against the Pussy Riot case, the greater the chance that the verdict will be fair.
A protest is also planned in Washington, where last month punk rockers and arts activists rallied outside the Russian Embassy.
The U.S. State Department has expressed concern about what it called the “politically motivated prosecution of the Russian opposition and pressure on those who express dissenting views.”
In France, Culture Minister Aurelie Filippetti last week issued a statement expressing concern that artistic freedom was on trial.
A German cross-party group of lawmakers sent a letter to the Russian ambassador calling the five months the band members have spent in custody and the possible prison terms “draconian and disproportionate” punishment.
“In a secular and pluralistic state, peaceful artistic activities — even if they may be seen as a provocation — should not lead to accusations of a serious crime and long prison sentences,” the lawmakers said in the letter, which more than 100 members of parliament signed.
The international press has been full of critical reports from the trial. One of Germany’s most influential magazines, Der Spiegel, featured the band on its cover: a picture of Tolokonnikova behind bars and the headline “Putin’s Russia.”
===
Greg Keller in Paris and David Rising in Berlin contributed to this report.
ALSO FROM THE WEB:
Pussy Riot punks Russia’s rulers
Pussy Riot gets support from Canadian pop star Peaches
Top Stories on the Web:
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
50 YEARS OFROCK & POP BRITISH MUSIC CELEBRATION AT THE OLYMPICS: Celebrities at London 2012 Closing Ceremony
Celebrities at London 2012 Closing Ceremony
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
A Nielsen Music 360 Study: RADIO #1 REASON CONSUMERS PURCHASE NEW MUSIC
RADIO #1 REASON CONSUMERS PURCHASE NEW MUSIC
USA Today is reporting a new Nielsen study using data from 3,000 online surveys concludes radio is still by far the number one way consumers hear about new music.
- 43% say they discover music most often through radio.
- 13% get recommendations from friends.
- 8% by watching YouTube.
According the paper, an overview of the Nielsen report will be released this week to record labels, distributors, retailers, advertisers and agencies.
In the report, other findings show, among smartphone owners, 53% have music player apps, 44% have radio apps and 28% have music store apps.
Data were collected from 3,000 online surveys for the Nielsen Music 360 Study, a comprehensive look at U.S. consumer interaction with music: where it's consumed, through which devices, apps and services, digital vs. physical preferences, the process of discovery, buying decisions, retailer choices, concert attendance and more
MUSIC ON YOU TUBE CHANNELS: The Warner Sound took the No. 1 spot with 9.13 million views from seven new videos. They weren't alone among music channels in the top 25; Noisey from Vice was No. 15 and Fuse was No. 21
In week two of our YouTube Original Channel Tracker, The Warner Sound took the No. 1 spot with 9.13 million views from seven new videos. They weren't alone among music channels in the top 25; Noisey from Vice was No. 15 and Fuse was No. 21.
The Warner Sound was officially launched in May by the Warner Music Group, part of YouTube's original channels initiative. It's an attempt by Warner to build a new media property with Google's money and not to be confused with its existing channel, Warner Music, which plays music videos and is YouTube's second-largest. YouTube's largest channel is Vevo, a joint venture of the other major labels, Sony, UMG and EMI.
Ocean MacAdams"The bulk of the channel is not music videos, of course, because the focus of the channel is really on creating entertainment programming around the artists," said Ocean MacAdams, an MTV veteran who joined Warner last fall to help launch the channel.
Among the artists that users can watch on the channel are Flo Rida and Theophilus London on "The Walk," a series that chronicles the last few minutes a performer has backstage before a concert; Regina Spektor and Ed Sheeran can be heard singing on "The Live Room"; and teen heartthrob Cody Simpson has his own series, the "Wish You Were Here Summer Series," where each video lets fans see what he is doing on his summer tour.
The channel also uses archived footage of some of its biggest artists from the Warner Music vaults -- Depeche Mode and Steve Martin among them -- to fill out its programming.
Prior to joining The Warner Sound, Mr. MacAdams was the senior vice president of programming at Current TV. And until 2009, he was a senior vice president at MTV, where he led the editorial operations at MTV News and produced a number of series, specials and live events. Working in television and the web aren't that different, he explains.
"I consider myself pretty platform-agnostic," said Mr. MacAdams, "I think there are different things that you do for different platforms, but the basics of good storytelling works no matter where you are."
We caught up with Mr. MacAdams to talk with him about The Warner Sound and what he's learned getting a YouTube channel off the ground.
Ad Age: Your background is in television, what drew you to online content and made you come over to The Warner Sound?
Mr. MacAdams: When I took the job there were a couple of things that made it really exciting. Number one was the opportunity to work with the amazing artists that are on all the various labels of the Warner Music Group. And also it's an amazing executive team at Warner Music from Lyor Cohen on down. And then the third thing was the opportunity to be part of this amazing experiment that YouTube is doing. The Original Channels Project that they're putting together is unprecedented, it's really exciting, and everybody in the industry was talking about it. It has been really exciting to be a part of it.
Ad Age: In your experience, what makes a really engaging YouTube video?
Mr. MacAdams: I think first of all it has to really grab you, immediately at the top. In traditional television, you have a bit more time to grab the viewer by the lapel. Where I think in web videos, if people aren't interested immediately they're going to click away. So that's one thing. I think also it still needs to be on the shorter end of things. We're certainly seeing that people are watching longer and longer videos on the web, but I still think that three to five minutes is your sweet spot. And then I think [viewers have] got to get it relatively quickly. You can be subtle, but the best stuff is the stuff you can figure out immediately.
Ad Age: How many videos do you put up a day?
Mr. MacAdams: The goal is to put up a video a day and we almost always do that. We often find ourselves putting up multiple videos at a time because we are producing some great stuff. But I think that it actually is possible to overload. We've found that if you put up too much stuff there is too much video for your subscribers to go through. So you want to find that sweet spot between putting up enough so people are constantly engaging and coming back, but at the same time not putting up too much so that it just becomes this wall of video that nobody can dig through.
Ad Age: What have been the channel's biggest learnings so far?
Mr. MacAdams: It's interesting. Some of the things that happen, happen to you no matter where you produce, whether it's for television, the web or mobile phones. In the end, you don't get to decide what's great, your audience gets to decide what's great. If it was a science, a computer could do it. You can produce something that you think is fantastic and is going to do great and it just bombs. And then you produce something that you think is great, it's cool, but you don't expect too much out of it, and then all of a sudden it just takes off like a rocket. The goal is to try to get as many of those as you can, so you can begin to see a pattern and begin to learn.
And that's exactly what's happening. It's still pretty early, but we're beginning to learn a few lessons about how long something can be and the kind of tone that we go for. I think one of the things that we found is that our tone is "pop-y." We go for a bit more of a happy, pop-y tone than I think some channels might. I think that's our vibe and we've certainly seen our audience respond to that.
Ad Age: It looks like you're getting some traction for "The Walk" and "The Live Room." Are there any series that surprised you?
Mr. MacAdams: The Live Room has been a huge success. I thought it would do well, but I didn't think it would do as well as it has done. Going into it, I thought it would do well because there is so much artist performance music on YouTube. If you search an artist you can find so much live performance video of them, though, so I didn't know how "The Live Room" would do. But the people who film this for us they've made it so beautiful...and intimate...and we're seeing that a lot of artists want to do it now. And we've got some really exciting ones coming down the pipe. I've been really happy with the performance of that series.
Ad Age: Did you learn anything from the YouTube veterans on how to serve and interact with your audience?
Mr. MacAdams: We didn't want to create a vibe when the channel launched that was like, "OK, now here are the professionals to show you guys how to do it." There have been a lot of great people doing a lot of fantastic stuff on YouTube for a long time. One of the constants that you see from folks that have trail blazed this world was that they really care about their audience, and interact with their audience in a way that you couldn't do in traditional television. So we really wanted to make sure that was something that we were doing.
That's really why we have our hosts. We have two fantastic hosts in Los Angeles, Erin Lucas and Krystal Bee, and they really act as curators for the channel. They respond to the audience, they'll have Instagram contests, they'll do giveaways of stuff...They also make sure that we're everywhere our audience is. [The hosts] are on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, they're constantly putting up photos on Instagram. They try to make sure that The Warner Sound is everywhere it can possibly be.
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