Serious About Making Films? Apply Here.

Anyone interested in applying for the BFI's Film Academy Talent Campus should click on this link.   Feb 18th is the deadline for applications. This is an amazing opportunity - a brilliant learning experience and a real leg up in getting started in the industry.

Music Industry - Pity the Songwriter

My last post linked to an article in the Guardian about how sharing ad revenue with Youtube is an important new revenue source for music artists and record companies.  Hellienne Lindvall's follow up article deals with how difficult it is for songwriters to make money from Youtube.  The problems that songwriters face in this regard are illustrative of the importance of scale or size when it comes to making money.

Put simply, if you're a big organisation you're more likely to be in a position to make money from people playing videos that use your music on Youtube.  If, however, you're a lone operator (as many songwriters are) or small organisation, it may not be worth the effort and time it costs you to try to collect money from such uses of your music

Music Industry - How to Make Money from Youtube

If sales of CDs are in a permanent state of decline and illegal downloading continues to gather pace, how are music artists and record labels going to make money out of music?  This article from The Guardian breaks down one of the key new revenue sources - sharing ad revenue with Youtube.  There are lots of great statistics and commentaries in here.  It's well worth mining for exam material. It even has figures for the Beggars Group, which part owns Rough Trade.

Music Industry - An Artist's Perspective

For more on the imminent closure of HMV and the reasons behind it, have a read of Irish musician Bressie's take on events.  It's interesting to read how an artist views issues around 360 record deals and illegal downloading. In particular, it's worth noting how he finds it difficult to resolve his understanding of the consumer's demand for easy and cheap access to music and his own need as an artist to make a living.

The Bad News That Should Help You In The Exam

So it's finally come to pass. I remember how in the months leading up to the death of my dog he stank something awful as his insides began to decay. Such has been the slow and drawn out demise of HMV that it seems such a smell has surrounded it for years. In any case, dog deaths aside, read this article on the BBC News site to explore the reasons for the end of HMV. If you don't mention this in the exam, one of two things will have happened: it will have been a very odd question or you will have been horribly distracted by the graffiti of previous exam candidates.