the spinART story an interesting one. here are a few more details around this:

what i have heard is that, as of sometime around april 2007, jeff price was “no longer associated with spinART” (see earlier blog entry). as recently as november 2007, he “doesn’t know where things are at” with spinART. strange.

the lawyer handling spinART’s affairs (who coincidentally (or not?) happens to be from newton, ma, jeff’s hometown) says that spinART went out of business in april, 2007. in july 2007, under the lawyer’s administration, spinART sold all of its assets to raise funds for creditors. he goes on to say that spinART’s financial records were “quite a mess” and “with the help of spinART’s principals” (which presumably includes jeff price and his partner joel morowitz), he “put together the best list he could of creditors and amounts owed.” shortly afterwards, a distribution was made to creditors, with unsecured creditors receiving pennies on the dollar.

it’s a sad story. no one wants to see anyone go out of business and lose their shirt…their investment…their reputation. but hold on a second - it wasn’t spinART that lost their shirt and investment - it was anyone associated with them - the artists, distributors and publishers. as i blogged earlier, jeff price is off with his new company, tunecore - i can’t say i’ve talked to him, but he seems to be doing just fine. his reputation appears to be intact. for example, the new issue (#61) of the big takeover has a short take on tunecore and refers to jeff as a “forward-thinking entrepreneur”, discusses how tunecore “empowers artists” and quotes jeff stating that “tunecore is an enabler that allows artists to succeed under any terms they want”…blah blah blah.

hey, that’s a great idea to enable artists, it’s just too bad that this philosophy apparently didn’t exist at spinART. here are some terms that i’d want as an artist:

1. have my label fulfill stated contractual terms, which includes,

2. providing royalty statements within 90 days of each 6 month period ended june 30 and december 31 (item 6 in the contract, by the way), and

3. paying the artist the balance due under the royalty statement as of those same time periods (also item 6)

4. label to pay the music publishers for mechanical licenses so the artist doesn’t end up unrecouped with the publisher (item 9)

5. label to pay the artist for synchronization licenses (so when the artist’s music is used on tv and the production company pays the label for that usage, the artist receives its contractual share)

6. label to pay the artist for merchandise sold to the label

7. label to pay the artist for proceeds of merchandise the label collects on the artist’s behalf

8. label to buy computers and phones that work - it would be incredibly bad luck for computers to consistently not receive e-mail and have hard drive crashes and for phones to consistently “not receive” voicemails

9. don’t stall, be evasive or lie

are those outrageous demands? i wouldn’t think so, it just seems like good business to me.

back to the liquidation process for a minute. you’d probably expect that even if your records are “a mess,” if the company’s owners are involved, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect them to come up with a relatively complete list of creditors. if you were a record label, where would you start? i think your artist roster is a good place. maybe look at who their publishers are. but somehow, spinART managed to leave some artists and publishers off their creditor list. i could see if you hadn’t heard from an artist in a couple of years…but if you’ve consistently received e-mails, voicemails and legal notices of breach of contract and contract termination, i think you’d probably remember that when coming up with the list of creditors. the mind boggles at just how this happened - i mean, it couldn’t have been intentional, could it?

what makes this more confusing is to this day, companies like itunes, amazon.com and spinART’s distributor continue to sell spinART product. i’m not entirely clear on whether they should be able to do this if spinART is out of business. hypothetically, if spinART was served with a notice of termination for breach of contract, then it is legally obligated to return original artwork and inventory. in the meantime, i don’t know where the proceeds of any sales end up, but you can be sure not in the bank accounts of spinART’s artists.

now if i could just get a hold of more details or e-mails…

Okay, let’s clear up the confusion here. We have, indeed, been recording our new L.P. At Stratosphere Sound in New York City, to be exact. We couldn’t really mention it before because of the silly rules of a grant we applied for (didnae get it). Andy Chase is producing and Rudyard Lee Cullers, engineering (they mixed Weightlifting and we’ve wanted to do a whole album with them ever since). These guys are just amazing. They created an incredibly productive atmosphere, not to mention all the beautiful sounds and smart ideas. And we had our pick of about forty vintage guitars! Grant Wilson did his best bubbling bass and Stevie Mulhearn was surrounded by banks of keyboards-all he was missing was a pointy hat and cape. Also along for the ride was old Kilmarnock friend and expert guitarer Jody Stoddart, who proved to be invaluable. We didn’t really rehearse any songs before we went, concentrating on just having fun jamming instead - the idea being to capture the excitement of playing something for the first time. From the first day, it was obvious that we were onto something special - the sessions were a dream. We just went in and played live all day and night for about a week, and stopped when we’d done fourteen songs. The next stage is in Martha’s Vineyard in January, where we will do some overdubs and singing. We are very excited (and a little bit surprised) by all of this, especially as we were royally ripped off by that con man Jeff Price and his band of thieves at Spinart (I’m sure someone will tell that tale here eventually). But we are used to rising above such bullshit, and we will prevail! Hooray!

Happy holidays everybody, and we’ll see you next year!

Love,

Paul Livingston