NARC. Magazine have announced details of their now legendary Stars In Their Eyes Xmas Party this year.

Taking place on Friday 18th December at The Cluny in Newcastle, the event will feature:

Peter Brewis (Field Music) & Jennie Redmond (The Cornshed Sisters) + Friends as Fleetwood Mac
Mansions Of Glory as Rocket From The Crypt
The Pilots & Mick Rolfe as The Pixies
The Illustrators as The Clash

+ Compere: The Claw of TRUTH!

Entry is a mere bah humbug £2 with presents and cake thrown in and doors are at 8pm. Hey ho ho ho ho!

Spotlight Extras and deleted scenes!

A couple of new North East bands to seek out:

France and The Habsburgs
Soundtracks for a B Movie

Some essential LIVE ACTION from around the region over the Christmas period:

04/12: The Longsands / Bruce Foxton’s From the Jam @ O2 Academy
05/12: Karoshi Brothers / Let’s Buy Happiness / The Runwells @ Hyem (free)
06/12: Vic Godard & The Subway Sect and France and the Habsburgs @ Cluny
07/12: Malcolm Middleton’s “Long Dark Night” @ Cluny 2
08/12: John Bramwell (I Am Kloot) @ Cluny 2
09/12: Brilliant Mind/All The Damn Kids/Honest Thief @ The End
11/12: Ryoga, Karoshi & Mammal Club @ Arts Centre Washington
12/12: Mushi Mushi farewell gig with The Guessmen and The Bubble Project @ Cluny 2
12/12: Generator SPEAR:LIVE - Dirty Weekend, Mammal Club & Pretty Hickeys @ Middlesbrough Town Hall Crypt
13/12: Bombay Bicycle Club @ Academy
14/12: Fruit Bats + O’Messy Life + Puzzle Muteson @ The Cluny
17/12: Detroit Social Club Christmas gig @ WHQ.
22/12: Gallows (pictured above) @ Legends.

The Observer Music Monthly supplement is to close as part of a major reshaping of the entire publication. The popular and widely respected monthly publication is part of three out of four monthly sections to be abolished, with only the ‘food monthly’ remaining.

Speaking with reporters at Media Guardian, Observer editor John Mulholland said: “It has been a difficult few months for staff while we have worked through these changes as part of Guardian News and Media’s publishing review, and some hard decisions had to be taken given the extremely challenging economic environment for newspapers”.

As previously reported by The Gen, the latest ABC circulation figures revealed that the entire sector of music consumer magazines showed a combined circulation drop of 10% in the first half of 2009.

The Observer will be significantly revamped, consisting of a main section, a sports supplement, an expanded review supplement and magazine. The Business, media news and travel sections will also lose their own supplements and become merged into the main paper.

The Observer Music Monthly was launched in 2003 and was edited by Caspar Llewellyn-Smith from inception up to closure.

You could argue that it is about time that the industry had some positive retail news. According to recently announced figures published by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) and originating from the Official Charts Company, 2009 has been the biggest ever year for singles sales, with 117 million individual tracks sold so far.

This exceeds 2008’s sales figures of 115.1 million. An unsurprising 98.6% of the songs this year were sold as digital tracks.

The head of the BPI Geoff Taylor said in a press release: “We’ve witnessed an astonishing transformation of the UK singles market during the last six years, with digital downloads rapidly overtaking sales of CD singles and cassettes to dominate the singles scene”.

According to data from the official charts company, the fastest selling single of the year so far is Cheryl Cole’s ‘Fight for this love’, which sold 290,000 in the first week of release, overtaking Alexandra Burke’s ‘Bad boys’, which had set the previous record of 185,000..

Other major selling tracks this year include ‘Poker Face’ by Lady Gaga and ‘In for the kill’ by La Roux (single artwork pictured above).

Generator and Transmit Consulting have produced three Music Business Development units for delivery as one day, bite-sized workshops, to run throughout the North East.

Appointed by The SUSTAIN Strategic Partnership to deliver a music business workshop programme, these short courses offer a practical solution for small music businesses, having been assembled by people with extensive experience of working within the music industry and has been funded under the One North East Higher Level Skills programme.

There will be seven units in total with the first three being:

Strategic Music Marketing - Promoting Your Own Music
Digital Music Distribution and Sales - Selling Music Online
Finance and Funding for Music Business

Delivered in Newcastle at Dance City over the 8th, 9th and 10th of December. There will be more confirmed in Sunderland and Teesside for delivery in January 2010. See our Events page for more details.

These courses are free to attend but will be restricted to 12 people per unit so please register interest as soon as possible. This is a one-off opportunity for music businesses in the region and the workshops are targeted at record labels, music managers, live promoters, DIY Bands and other music businesses.

For more information and to register for the workshops please email Martin or call 0191 245 0099.

With 2010 already shaping up to be a premier year for North East pop music, The Gen are very excited about Field Music’s imminent return, with a new double album and live shows confirmed.

The band have effectively been on hiatus since 2007, with core songwriters Peter and David Brewis focusing on The Week that Was and School of Language projects respectively.

Due out on 15th February next year on the Memphis Industries label in the UK, ‘Field Music (Measure)’ will feature 20 new tracks from the Wearside pop outfit.

There are two new tracks available for free download at their brand spanking new website.

The band are set to debut new tracks at some forthcoming live shows in Britain and the US before the end of the year, including two shows at The Cluny in Newcastle on 27th and 28th November. The new live line-up of Field Music also includes Ian Black and Kevin Dosdale of Razmataz Lorry Excitement .

For all live dates and album info, go to their Myspace.

The complete track listing for ‘Field Music (Measure)’ is:

In The Mirror
Them That Do Nothing
Each Time is a New Time
Measure
Effortlessly
Clear Water
Lights Up
All You’d Ever Need to Say
Let’s Write a Book
You and I
The Rest is Noise
Curves of the Needle
Choosing Numbers
The Wheels are in Place
First Come the Wish
Precious Plans
See You Later
Something Familiar
Share the Words
It’s About Time

The UK Government have recently made a surprising U- turn in the live music sector by proposing a licensing exemption for small venues to host live gigs.

During a parliamentary debate of the Media and Sport select committee’s recent review of the 2003 legislation, Sports Minister Gerry Sutcliffe announced that he planned to exempt venues with a capacity of under 100 from the requirements introduced by the controversial Licensing Act 2003.

Although there is no specific timeframe for this to be implemented yet, Sutcliffe said that, provided the exemption proposal had cross party support, he would seek to rush it through parliament.

Trade Associations such as UK Music and The Musician’s Union have continually campaigned against the perceived shortcomings and oversights of the current Licensing Act, as previously reported by The Gen.

The key issues were explored in a report submitted by the Culture, Media and Sport Committee earlier in the year proposing a licensing exemption for venues with a maximum capacity of 200 and the reintroduction of the ‘two in a bar’ rule, which had previously allowed pubs and small venues to host live music performed by one or two musicians without a permit, prior to the introduction of the Licensing Act 2003.

At the time, the Government rejected all suggested reforms and recommendations. The Chair of the select committee, John Whittingdale is a fierce critic of Government inability to reform what many in the live sector consider to be ill-conceived legislation concerning live music.

Commenting in a statement following the announcement, Whittingdale clearly welcomed the proposals but also said that the 100-capacity exemption was a “late and fairly small” concession.

For more information on the Licensing Act 2003 and how it affects live music promoters, go to the live music support section of Generator’s new website

Have your say! Does this concession from the Government come as a surprise? Is it a step in the right direction or a “late and fairly small concession”? What are your thoughts on the Licensing Act 2003 and should other aspects of it be reevaluated? Get involved in the discussion below!

Entertainment retail giants HMV recently announced a partnership with secondary ticketing site Seatwave that will enable fans using the service to pick up tickets in person from an HMV store as opposed to waiting for tickets in the mail. This could obviously be perceived as a response to the recent postal strikes at Royal Mail across the UK.

Seatwave will also now provide a secure ticket exchange service as part of the HMV online ticketing operation.

HMV’s London Trocadero Centre outlet is the first store to feature the Seatwave ticket collection service, which became open to the public on 23rd October.

Commenting on the partnership, Joe Cohen, CEO and founder of Seatwave, said in a statement: “HMV is clearly the most innovative entertainment retailer in the market and we’re honoured and excited to work with them to expand both of our businesses.”

Seatwave was founded in 2006 as a fan-to-fan ticket exchange operating in Europe and aiming to offer customers a more secure way of purchasing tickets to sold-out music, sports and entertainment events.

According to a report from website Ticketnews, British officials estimated that the entire secondary ticketing market in the UK was worth ₤1 billion in January 2008.
As previously reported by The Gen, HMV also made a serious move into the live music sector earlier this year by going into partnership with live promotion company Mama group.

The Business Secretary Lord Mandelson (pictured above) recently revealed specific details of the Government’s campaign against illegal filesharing.

Speaking at the Government’s Digital Creative Industries Conference (C&binet), Mandelson confirmed that the Internet connections of persistent offenders could be blocked as a last resort by the summer of 2011.

The strategy is expected to be officially outlined in the Government’s digital economy bill later this month and will involve a ‘staged’ process of warning notifications prior to implementing Internet suspension, as previously proposed by Lord Mandelson and reported by The Gen in September.

In this respect, the legislation has some parallels with the ‘graduated response’ strategy advocated by UK Music .

In what the Government has referred to as a ‘legislate and enforce’ strategy, the effectiveness of warning letters to persistent illegal filesharers will be evaluated for the first 12 months.

Consequently, if illegal filesharing has not dropped by 70% by April 2011, then cutting off Internet connections could be introduced. Under this system, repeat offenders will be warned that they are infringing and then, in a second letter, informed that technical measures could be implemented.

Further infringement will lead to the offenders’ names being put on a “serious infringers list”, with ISPs then “obliged to exercise technical measures”.

Individuals will have the right to appeal the decision within 20 working days to an independent body set up by Ofcom and the suspension will not come into force until the appeal has been heard. If the first appeal is unsuccessful the infringer can then lodge a second appeal, again within 20 working days.

Speaking at the conference, Mandelson said: “The British government’s view is that taking people’s work without due payment is wrong and that, as an economy based on creativity, we cannot sit back and do nothing as this happens.”

The Business Secretary added: “It must become clear that the days of consequence-free widespread online infringement are over.”

Cutting off illegal filesharers’ Internet access was originally ruled out in Lord Carter’s Digital Britain report released in June 2009.

Despite this, in August of this year the Department for Business Innovation and Skills under the direction of Mandelson proposed tougher measures, including suspensions as a last resort.

Digital piracy costs the music industry an estimated £180m each year.

However, some ISPs have voiced concerns regarding the implementation of such measures, with the Head of BT’s Consumer Division John Petter warning that suspensions of service could cost ISPs up to £1m each year.

Have your say! What do you think about these important issues? Is this campaign going to be completely enforceable in a practical sense? Is the Government’s aim of reducing filesharing by 70% realistic or more of a rhetorical gesture to industry? How will the ISPs respond? Will this discourage illegal filesharing in the UK?

Hip-hop group Public Enemy (pictured above) are the first high profile artists to sign up to SellaBand.

The company essentially uses a fan-funded model in a similar way to Bandstocks, the method previously used with great success by Patrick Wolf earlier this year.

Basically, fans contribute a certain amount of cash to recording costs, in this case the band are suggesting $25 per person with the group aiming to raise $250,000 USD (£158K) to complete the project.

Obviously, such funding would traditionally come from a record label but the whole idea here is that artists tap into fan communities as investors and therefore retain more copyright over the material they record. In return for their investment, fans will receive a unique, numbered digipak edition of the CD alongside a pro ratio share of 33.3% of all net revenues generated by sales.

In a statement, the band’s leader Chuck D (real name Carlton Douglas Ridenhour) said: “SellaBand’s financial engine model goes about restructuring the music business in reverse. It starts with fans first, then the artists create from there. The music business is built on searching for fans and this is a brand new way for acts to create a new album with fans first, already on board”.

The band were previously signed to a number of labels in different territories including Def Jam recordings, Columbia and Sony. Their most recent and twelfth album ‘How you sell soul to a soulless people who sold their soul?’ was released in 2007 on the Slam Jamz label, which is seemingly a subsidiary of Columbia in which Chuck D is a commissioner.

SellaBand CEO Johan Vosmeijer said in a statement: “Our goal is to empower the artist and their fans, both creatively and commercially. Working with Public Enemy is an incredibly exciting way to take the European success we’ve built over the past three years and offer it to stateside bands.”

Intriguingly, SellaBand announced a deal in March 2009 to launch in the US with Chuck D’s music company BTN (Bring The Noise) Management in which the rapper would fulfill the role of SellaBand’s “US ambassador”.

In October of this year, SellaBand launched a new model that allows artists complete flexibility in their fan-funded projects and the company doesn’t retain any rights.

Under their original business model, the funding was restricted for recording an album with raising a fixed total of either $50,000 or $100,000 USD, with shares at $10 per person.

Have your say - What are your thoughts on SellaBand, Bandstocks, Slicethepie et al? Is it an innovative way of enabling fan communities to effectively function as a record label? Is the success of this model extremely dependent on artists having a significant existing fan base that can arguably only be achieved with the traditional PR, marketing and distribution of a major label in the first place? Will we see more high profile artists choose to fund their recording in this way and retain copyright, adding weight to the argument that selling music is all about intellectual property rights now?

North East Beat Unsigned is a celebration of North East music presented by Generator in association with Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums on Saturday 14th November in the Great Hall of The Discovery Museum, Newcastle upon Tyne

Entry is FREE and the event is open to ALL AGES from 12.00 - 5.00pm

Featuring two of the best new bands in the region:

Brilliant Mind

Let’s Buy Happiness

and introducing five emerging bands and solo artists from the North East, showcasing to a panel of music industry professionals and fans:

Black Cab Casino
The Anglo Form
Vacation Pioneers
Pink Lane
Illustrators

Tom Robinson will be taking a break from his influencial BBC 6Music radio show to be one of the industry guests offering advice to the bands.

Peter Brewis of massively influential Sunderland band Field Music will be joining him, along with Claire Dupree, editor of the region’s best monthly, music magazine NARC. All are well placed to advise the array of talent performing.

North East Beat Unsigned coincides with the final weeks of museum’s North East Beat exhibition, an exploration of the North East’s popular music scene from the 1940s to the present day.

Museum entry is free and we encourage everyone to check out items of memorabilia from the likes of The Animals, The Police, Maximo Park, The Futureheads, Field Music, and legendary music show The Tube.

Discovery Museum, Blandford Square, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 4JA

Tel: 0191 232 6789

More band and panellist details will be announced in mid-October.

For more information on North East Beat Unsigned please contact Joe.