Jesse Harris is part of Norah Jones’ backing band and also co-writer.  it would seem that he is one quietly busy person with another solo album coming out soon (10th July in the States), and a soundtrack (The Hottest State) as well.  not to mention collaborating with a number of other artists on their albums. Just to top that off – song gigs, albeit based in New York and other cities in northern USA.

Given his prior work, the new album, called ‘Feel’ wont be as immediate as say the work with Norah Jones, but will grow on you and should have some fine lyrics. Fingers crossed for a European release.

More information can be found at:

www.jesseharrismusic.com

www.myspace.com/jesseharrismusic

 A good review of the new Tom McRae album here – Link to Modern Music: Tom Mcrae – King Of Cards »

 The Daily Mail has an interesting little article talking to Richard Branson (of Virgin Records fame) about how the record label was launched with Mike Oldfield as its first artist. 

Article here: Link to ‘£20 for tubular bells? They’d better be worth it’ | the Daily Mail

 I’ve been reading the Digital Music News today – with another report of sales declining. I presume that the article is built around press releases of the likes of the IFPI and the BPI. The problem I have with these stats is when I look at the IFPI’s figures (for the UK at least) unit volumes are increasing.  Taking figures from 2000-2005 (2006 figures you have to pay for) as you can see here.

Unless I’m mistaken that is definitely an upward trend. Now the relative value of individual CDs could be argued as download on the basis that prices are probably rising at lower rate than your preferred measure of inflation, but so are a large number of things (including simple production costs) – this is simply a reflection of market pressures and the evolving global market.

The other thing is that the music industry is highly seasonal – in part this is the record industries own making.  How many high profile artists release a new album in the first three months of the year?  Very few – your U2’s REM’s, Coldplay’s either hit the Easter period or are released in the August – November period. So you’ll see seasonal drops and rises – so 6% drop between first and last quarters is to be expected.

But releasing major artists and promoting them all in a shortish period, aren’t they creating a tougher competition between themselves for people’s dollar and pound? I know now we have a little one too take care of, I have notably more limited budget – so more albums get pushed onto my amazon wishlist if I spend my month’s music money before I’ve got all the releases I’d like. Those albums on my wishlist that aren’t purchased soon after will probably get deleted from the list – and that’s lost sales. So spreading releases means I can spread my spending better – means more sales. And I’m damn sure this is a common situation.

So as Disraeli said – There are lies, damned lies, and statistics, and the music industry may have problems but it can do a lot to help itself without resorting to suing the hell out their customers and people trying to sell their product.