BigRedX

Sitting down? They are designed to be played in rock bands standing up, preferably with one foot up on the monitors whilst punching the air when you don't have to fret any of the strings. Buy a boring P-Bass if you want to play sitting down.

It's the same with 12-string guitars. That's why the best ones have low-output single coil pick-ups.

Add to the fact that for a two-piece body made of equally sized pieces of wood, there are 8 different ways that those two pieces of wood can be glued together, which may or may not have a different outcome to the sound of the resulting instrument. Edit to correct the number of ways the 2 pieces can be glued together from 6 to 8

I always find it hilarious that some of our "American Friends" think that Liberal means some radical, far left, neo-communist revolutionary dedicated to bringing down the good old capitalist establishment, whereas in the UK in stands for wishy-washy, dull, ineffectual middle of the roadism...

Vampire Weekend. Not vampires or even the slightest bit Goth. In fact some of the most insipid ska I have had the misfortune to have to listen to. There used to be a Nottingham band called Hot Japanese Girl, composed of three beardy white blokes, so none of them were Hot, Japanese or Girls.

If we all felt so strongly about how terrible Spotify are (and remember that Spotify are only bad at paying musicians because their record companies sold the streaming rights for a relatively small amount and keep the lion's share of this money for themselves) then we could vote with our wallets and cancel our premium subscriptions. But we don't.

Ignoring the fact that gigging currently isn't possible, if one of my bands was popular enough to be getting a million streams in a year, then we'd probably also be selling more than enough physical product and downloads to be close to making enough to completely finance all the band's activities and turn a profit. Certainly IMO the revenue made from streaming has always a tiny proportion of any band's overall income. I've always looked on it as nice little extra bonus.

There's an extensive thread about stand-alone drum machine and DAW plug-ins here.

If you look more closely he's only worth that much because the Spotify share offer and the fact that gullible investors have gone out and bought them, despite the fact that Spotify have still not managed to show how to make a profit running a streaming service, even at the bargain basement rates that the record labels have agreed upon with them. It's all "Emperor's New Clothes" and at some point the investors will realise that and pull the plug.

Another update... According to the Interparcel tracking the parcel is still in Belgian Customs awaiting clearing. The person to whom I am sending this parcel has heard nothing so far, so it's not being held up because they haven't paid VAT and/or Import Duty, although. According to the Belgian Post Office web site the customs delays are 20-24 days. The 24 day deadline expired last Friday. I got in touch with Interparcel and they promised to escalate the enquiry and I would receive a reply with 72 hours. That deadline expired at CoP on Wednesday. Further conversations with Interparcel revealed that they still haven't heard anything and are apparently chasing it up again. It will be Monday at the earliest before I hear anything, at which point the parcel will have been in transit for 6 weeks. If Interparcel can't give me an update by then I am going to push for the parcel to be declared lost and get my insurance.

But they are tat. No-one back in the 70s bought these instruments because they really wanted this particular guitar or bass. They bought them because they were all they could afford, and if the terrible quality and lack of playability didn't put them off playing for life, they were unceremoniously dumped as soon as they could afford something better.

Except that: 1. It took Leo two attempts to get what is now the "standard" P-Bass design, 2. From 1976 onwards he would have wanted you to play a Musician Stingray, and 3. from 1979 onwards he would have wanted you to be playing something with G&L on the headstock.

This is the sort of mis-information put out by CD Baby and other Aggregator services who are based in the US and aim their advice mainly at US based artists where the rules on getting royalties (especially for publishing are different). What you need first and foremost is ISRC codes which in the UK you can get yourself for FREE simply by registering your "record label" with the PPL. That gets you a unique record label identifier code and then ability to generate as many ISRCs as you need forever. It's the ISRCs that are used by the PRS to identify tracks for performance royalties. The UPC/EAN codes are part of the service the Aggregators provide, and IIRC are a tiny percentage of the admin fee for getting your music on the streaming and download services. Also if you are a UK-based artist you don't need any of the Aggregators' "publishing services" because what they offer is entirely covered by PRS membership, and they don't actually do any proper "publishing" - i.e. services that songwriters would expect for someone taking a percentage of their performance royalties such as promoting the songs for use in TV and film production, or trying to get other artists to cover them. In fact before the rise of using "rock" music (in all it's various sub genres) as the sound track for films and TV programmes I would have said their was very little point in any non-mainstream artist having a publishing deal as they were unlikely to get any benefits but simply lose a fair percentage of their income. Also if other people have uploaded your music to YouTube you can find and register these with the PRS and claim the royalties. One of the bands I'm in does quite nicely out of this arrangement.

How do you know that they're not just another group of Japanese Visual Kei pretty boys? Have a look at some "Malice Mizer" and "Versailles" videos if you don't believe me.

The problem is not Spotify. It's the fact that the record labels take a massive proportion of the royalties that a Spotify play produces, and they sold the streaming rights for (relatively) next to nothing. Looking at what my songs earn from a Spotify play, if I had 1,000,000 streams I'd be doing quite nicely. Not enough to give up the day job, but certainly enough to finance the next round of recordings and videos for one of my bands - in other words a great deal more than £33. That's because I haven't signed a crap deal with a rip-off record company. On the other hand I don't have a 1,000,000 streams because very few people have heard of either of the bands I play with, so if a record label came along and could guarantee getting my music the sort of publicity that would generate millions of streams I might at least take a second look at that deal. The other problem is that streaming doesn't really pay anyone. None of the major players actually make any money off providing streaming services, even when they are paying peanuts for the privilege. They are either being propped up by the profitable parts of their parent companies, or gullible investors who still haven't seen any return on what they have put in. SoundCloud did manage to turn a profit for a while but that's because they weren't paying any royalties at all! Since that was discovered they have been in financial difficulties.