This site is a blog for musicians and music industry people. It is a free educational resource and it is also the way I advertise my music consulting services. I am an entertainment professional with deep roots in the music industry. Throughout my music career I have been a major label A&R representative, a music supervisor, an artist manager, a reality show producer, a bass player and the head of a digital record label.
This past week in the music industry, technology reigned as TuneCore launched a new service to help artists collect on missing royalties and EMI partnered with Echo Nest to build a space for music app developers to hone their craft. Also, studies showed the music industry could be directly helpful to the U.S. economic recovery process.
TuneCore Songwriter Publishing Administration Service Launches
The online distribution service TuneCore announced the arrival of its new service that helps songwriters collect on unpaid royalties on November 2, according to the Wall Street Journal. TuneCore is used by thousands of signed and unsigned bands and helps them get their songs and albums into major online stores. Now, the platform has enhanced the support it offers to artists trying to capture their royalties painlessly with the Songwriter Publishing Administration service, designed to get at the millions of dollars of revenue that has been uncollected by artists, referred to as the “black box.”
TuneCore has been discussing missed royalties issues for many months in the site blog and has long promised to start to roll out services that will help address the major problems in this area. This latest release marks the company’s first solution of this type for songwriters. The tool offers a deep roster of features that will help songwriters register their songs, track copyrights and pursue legal action to get unclaimed royalties.
This service for songwriters costs a one-time $49.99 setup fee plus 10% of the money that TuneCore is able to recover for each artist.
This past week, Nine Inch Nails frontman (and recent Academy Award winner) Trent Reznor provided his endorsement of TuneCore’s new offering. He has been using TuneCore for over six years for all his releases, citing it as an “interesting and efficient solution” to get his music out “everywhere and circumvent the existing machine in place:” “When they reached out to tell me about their new big idea – adding transparency and straightforwardness to the murky waters of publishing administration (which to me is a world as boring and convoluted as it sounds) I was very interested. If they could pull off what they did with distribution on the publishing administration side of things, this could be a pretty big deal – it could be another important tool that further empowers the musician/songwriter directly.”
(You can also read a past interview I did with TuneCore founder and CEO Jeff Price, who talked to me about some of the finer points of digital distribution.)
EMI Builds a “Music App Developer Sandbox” with Echo Nest
EMI and Massachusetts-based tech company Echo Nest announced on Thursday that they will be launching a site that will give music app developers an online platform, music-analysis tools and a place to play with and build new app ideas based on EMI content and properties. Developers that work through this “digital sandbox” will not get guaranteed licensing for the apps they create – EMI has to approve all apps that get built and use its artists’ songs, videos and other content. But, this tool is promising to greatly decrease the barrier to entry into the app space for tech entrepreneurs.
The idea for the website came about because of the high failure rate of companies building products around artists’ work in the music space. Online companies like Liquid Audio, CenterSpan, Echo Networks, Music Buddha, etc. have all died quickly, often because major labels make them go through such a lengthy process to get content or use content in new ways. This drives up costs for these tech startups, delays launches and makes raising capital very difficult.
Bertrand Bodson, EMI’s head of digital marketing said that the company has already secured deals with a handful of artists that have recording and songwriting deals through EMI, such as Gorillaz and the Pet Shop Boys. These artists will collaborate directly with app developers. EMI is also making content available to app developers from some of its older pop acts, including Culture Club and Simple Minds. Echo Nest will be managing the platform and making music-related software features such as song identification, playlist creation and remixing available to tech-preneurs.
This sandbox also has preset licensing terms: It is a 60-40 split, with developers getting the smaller amount. This split is competitive with deals that major labels have been offering online music retailers and subscription music services. EMI will be charged with clearing the rights to tracks that developers use and will provide some marketing services to promote the music apps that make the cut.
One of the major goals of the project is to help music developers gain entry into the growing mobile market. Only about 4.2% of the apps available in the Apple App Store relate to music. Echo Nest already controls over 200 music apps. So far, the company has signed up EMI and Universal Music Group’s Island Def Jam, a label that is not yet ready to use the sandbox.
The Music Industry Could Be Vital to Economic Recovery
The results of recent studies revealed that the music industry could play a big part in economic recovery in the coming years. An article published on the Bloomberg Businessweek website revealed that a report released on November 2 in Washington by the International Intellectual Property Alliance – a collection of organizations whose members include Apple Inc. and Paramount Pictures – showed that the publishing, software, film, music and TV industries pumped $930 billion dollars into the U.S. economy in 2010, which represents over 6% of the total gross domestic product. As a result, industry experts are highlighting the importance of pushing ahead with new anti-piracy legislation.
During the past few weeks, entertainment and software industry groups have been asking Congress to keep the sector healthy by approving recent legislation that would shut down websites that sell illegal copies of movies, music and computer programs and games. An attorney representing the organization, Steven Metalitz stated, “The analyses released … demonstrate the vibrancy of copyright and creativity as an engine for growth. To preserve and enhance that vibrancy, we must ensure strong legal protection for U.S. creativity, innovation and ingenuity, both here and in the markets of our trading partners, in both the physical and online world.”
Recently, U.S. Texas Representative Lamar Smith introduced the bill H.R. 3261 that would allow the U.S. Attorney General to pursue court orders that would block foreign websites that steal and sell U.S. products. It would also increase the criminal penalties for selling counterfeit medication and military goods.
However, some tech experts and lawmakers are against this bill, because they believe it may be too ambitious. The Computer & Communications Industry Association – which represents companies like Google and Facebook – are pushing for more objective discussion about copyright bills in Congress before anything is passed. The organization’s CEO, Ed Black said, “Too often we hear about the cost of piracy without also considering the cost to legitimate sectors of the U.S. economy of poorly targeted copyright enforcement measures like the pending Protect IP Act and its even worse companion, H.R. 3261 … Congress needs to consider the overall economic picture both to the entertainment industry as well as the tech industry and other sectors.”
Last week, legal and copyright issues came to the forefront of music business news as antitrust regulators discussed the potential results of a merger between EMI and one of the other three major record labels, the National Music Publishers’ Association settled its long-standing lawsuit with YouTube and the music industry expressed concern about how music-locker services might affect the marketplace.
Officials Relaxed about EMI Merger Ramifications
Antitrust regulators are not raising many red flags when it comes to the potential EMI Group merger with either Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment or Warner Music Group, according to an article published in the Los Angeles Times last weekend. And this surprises some executives and others in the music community, given the merger would mean the number of major labels in existence would be down to just three, from the six that existed in the late 1990s.
Why is no one worried? According to experts, it’s because major labels don’t have the power they once had because of the revolutionary changes technology and other factors have brought to the music industry. Digital channels especially have loosened record companies’ hold on the marketplace, and online retailers, including iTunes and Amazon.com have helped artists become less dependent on labels to peddle their music to fans. Similarly, social media and other online resources have brought much less expensive marketing tools directly to musicians, making relationships with labels and attachment to the labels’ large marketing teams less necessary.
Mark Lemley, an antitrust law professor at Stanford Law School adds, “… Things have changed. There are new sources of competition in the digital environment, and the dominance of the four majors has been reduced.”
However, while certain truths about the modern music landscape do decrease some fears about the potential EMI absorption within U.S.-based legal circles, regulators in Europe – where there are different standards – are watching the situation very closely. According to Michael Cohen, an antitrust litigator with Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker in Washington, D.C., two factors are of the most concern to officials: market power; the ability to collide. Officials will need to know the answer to some important questions: Will the merged firm be able to dictate prices that EMI and whichever firm takes it on don’t independently have the power to dictate right now? Will the environment caused by the merger make it easier for the companies that remain to get together to collude?
This isn’t the first time major music companies have been questioned about pricing issues. In 2002, labels paid $67.7 million to settle lawsuits filed by a few states’ attorneys general. The charge was that the labels were inflating CD prices by coercing retailers into agreeing to minimum prices. And in 2003, the FTC ruled that Vivendi Universal and Warner had broken antitrust laws when they prohibited discounting of the Three Tenors’ records.
Now, digital music services, including iTunes and Amazon often discount music in order to compete. As an example, Amazon recently decided to sell Lady Gaga’s album Born This Way for just 99 cents. Pricing is a common area of focus when it comes to music companies. However, another concern of regulators in the Digital Age is curbing technological innovation. Many others worry that if major music companies are given too much power in their industry, they might prevent the efforts of innovative start-up companies.
Citigroup, Inc. took over EMI after Terra Firma Capital Partners was unable to pay off a $5.4-billion loan in February. And the first round of bids on the company is expected to come around in the fall. EMI currently holds 10% of the recorded music business and 20% of the publishing business worldwide. Included among EMI’s charges are mega-stars like Katy Perry, Pink Floyd and Willie Nelson.
National Music Publishers’ Association Settles YouTube Copyright Suit
The National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) finally resolved its copyright infringement lawsuit with YouTube, according to Billboard.biz. While details are not yet available, the resolution is good news for music publishers, who have been waiting for news since the suit was first filed in 2007; now they have license agreements with YouTube and will get royalties from YouTube for musical works that appear in videos on the site.
The Harry Fox Agency (HFA) will be in charge of setting up the licensing agreement, which will include synch rights for music in user-generated videos. However, even publishers not with HFA will be able to benefit from the agreement. Royalty payments will be determined by global advertising revenue earned by those videos that use the music.
While the appeal is still pending, the NMPA and music publishers including Edward B. Marks Music Company, Freddy Bienstock Music Company and The Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization have already filed notices to dismiss their appeal. More information can be found about the resolution on the NMPA website.
The Music Industry Braces for the Impact of Music-Locker Services
In May, LimeWire agreed to pay $105 million to settle a copyright infringement suit filed against them by the major labels. And Wired magazine called this event “the end of an era,” so reports an article published on Law.com last week. And this “era” was the 10-year period when the recording industry fought to stop unlicensed music swapping online through P2P networks.
However, now the music industry faces a new challenge: As global music sales continue to decrease, new cloud-based music-locker services like those begun by Amazon, Apple and Google have cropped up making many industry professionals and some artists concerned about copyright issues yet again.
Cloud-based music services are a direct response to the increased use of mobile devices, including smartphones and the recently-released iPad. They allow users to upload their digital music files to remote web servers and access them anytime, anywhere. But according to some, the cloud-based model technically involves copying copyrighted content, and new licenses need to be administered. Many in the music industry also point out that there could be a lot of loopholes in music-locker systems that might give fans more ways to swap files illegally. As Steven Marks, general counsel of the Recording Industry of America (RIAA) points out, “For some services, the term ‘cyber-locker’ is a misnomer because the content is not locked.”
Experts on the other side of the equation disagree that cloud services could potentially violate existing licensing agreements and think the recording industry is focusing too heavily on the finer points of the law and not enough on establishing realistic business strategies that work in the current environment. Corynne McSherry, the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s intellectual property director says, “You don’t need a license for simply providing storage for people to upload their music … They want to wring every possible cent out of every reproduction of music. That’s listening to your lawyers and not your business people.”
Amazon was the first of the major companies to get into cloud-based music storage, revealing the $20-per-20-gig Cloud Drive service in March, despite opposition from the industry. Google also started its Google Music Beta in May without obtaining any additional licensing deals. Apple announced its iCloud service in June after making deals with the four major record labels to give them 70 percent of iCloud revenue. Apple approached licensing differently from its competitors because it set up its service differently: With Cloud Drive and Google Music Beta, users must upload files manually, whereas iCloud scans the songs on a user’s computer and grants that user access to identical copies in the central Apple database for all songs it recognized.
Major music labels have not commented on whether they will sue Amazon and Google over their lack of licenses. However, an anonymous source from one of the labels stated that he thought that Amazon and potentially Google would probably eventually cut licensing deals simply to compete with Apple.
John Wozniak, has worn many hats during his fifteen years in the music industry: As Singer/Songwriter; Record Producer; Owner of Mushroom Studios (Vancouver, BC), A&R Rep (Capitol/EMI), but he’s probably best known as the creative force behind Marcy Playground; the band that brought you the 1997 hit “Sex and Candy.” Almost 12 years later, John continues to write and release albums with the band, and I was able to catch up with him by phone last week, as Marcy Playground’s “Leaving Wonderland 2009/10” tour found their bus rolling into Houston Texas.
John was so prolific I had to split this interview into two parts. Part two will be along in a day or two.
You’re one of those artists who was playing locally and then wrote a big fat hit song and had national exposure.
JW:
That’s the really short version. The longer story is that, in 1995, the Executive V.P. of A&R at EMI Records in New York, a man named Don Rubin, listened to a copy of a solo album I recorded in 1990 called “Zog Bogbean: From The Marcy Playground.”
Zogbog… what?
JW:
[laughs] Zog Bogbean. It was the name of a character from some short stories I wrote as a kid. – Anyway, he gave a few stacks of CDs, that included my album, to his summer intern while she was working for him and, before she left in September, he asked her if there was anything he’d missed, that she liked. She said she’d been listening to Zog Bogbean all summer and really loved it. So Don checked it out, and eventually got in touch with me out in Olympia Washington, where I was going to college. After a few conversations about what my plans and aspirations were, I remember him saying to me, flat out “I absolutely love your music John but, being all the way out there, you’re in kind of an impossible place for us to work with you right now. If you lived in New York, it would be a completely different story.”
Olympia had two labels at the time, both indie icons: ‘Kill Rock Stars (KRS)’ and ‘K Records.’ Kill Rock Stars was all Riot Grrrl music, and K Records was too “indie cool” to be interested in my music. So, shortly after my initial conversations with Don, I made the decision to drop out of college and move to New York. And that decision changed my life.
When I got to New York I didn’t call Don immediately. I wanted to get all my ducks in a row first, and record some of my newer songs. I wanted to hand him a great sounding demo, which I think is one of the keys when you’re starting out.
As much as people call this business of ours “The Music Industry”, it’s actually more accurately called “The Recording Industry.” You really have to have a kick-ass sounding recording in order to get people’s attention in this business. Labels know that your demo wasn’t recorded by Butch Vig or Jack Joseph Puig, but if it sounds like it was… Okay, now you’ve got somebody’s attention! I mean, I saw you in your office, Rick, back when you were working at Elektra, with stacks of demos on your desk. I know how it works. There’s the “interest stack” which is a short stack of material you’ve already checked out, heard some cool stuff on, and want to give a second listen to. You also have the “priority stack”, which comes from solicited sources like managers, lawyers, associates at the label, and your boss. Then you have the, “Oh-my-God-I-can’t-believe-I-have-to-wade-through-this” stack of shit that comes in through the mail, totally unsolicited. That stack usually takes up a small storage closet somewhere in the building, right? Yeah, I know.
I did A&R at Capitol/EMI in Toronto for almost two years. I was in charge of listening to every demo that came in to the building. I was also put in charge of prioritizing which showcases our staff would attend during various music conferences. And, I don’t mind telling you, having that experience from the other side of the desk really opened my eyes. Given the volume of music that comes into a record label, it’s amazing that A&R people find anything to focus on. Deciding if it’s worth it to go to a club and see a band usually comes down to either… the strength of their demo, or a buzz on the band. Music conference like CMJ or SXSW, can be fruitful for labels, but exhausting to the ears. With hundreds of bands to see at SXSW, watching A&R people scurrying around, trying to manage their time, attempting to squeeze in certain artists and find out where the buzz is, becomes like watching a movie about a madd scavenger hunt from the silent-film era, where all the people have badges, checklists, and a cell phone. Most major label A&R people have absolutely no patience for “diamonds in the rough.” If you’re a great songwriter but can’t sing, play, or perform… then send your demo to a publishing company, not a major label. They don’t care. An indie label might care, if you’re as talented as someone like Daniel Johnston… but the majors don’t. Why?… because they don’t trade in great songwriters, they trade in good looking performers who make cool sounding recordings of marketable songs. That’s their business. They don’t actually care if your mom writes your songs, so long as they’re hits, and you look and sound cool playing them.
How did you go about getting a great recording?
JW:
I got some musicians together and found a good recording studio on Long Island that we could go into for not much money and record a really great demo. We visited a few studios around New York but, in the end, I settled on Sabella Studios. They were the only one that actually had a hit record on the wall. It was Public Enemy’s “It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back,” which, if you study your music history, you know how significant of an album that was. The owner, Jim Sabella, who is just a really wonderful human being, gave me a copy of their studio CD sampler to take home. Everything on that sampler sounded like music I would listen to. They had the most professional sound.
The other reason I liked that studio is because it’s actually in the basement of a house out in Roslyn. That’s not to say it’s a home-studio, ’cause it’s really not. It’s a commercial studio, it’s just small and intimate. The acoustics were designed in the early 80s by the guy who designed John Lennon’s studio. Jim has a vintage Neve console, tube mics, and an incredible collection of outboard equipment.
We spent a week in there and recorded ten songs live off the floor. I overdubbed some guitars and vocals, and we took the last two days to mix it all down. I was pretty happy with the results, and so the next step was to get in touch with Don Rubin again, let him know I was living in town, and send him the new demos. So that’s what I did. About a week or two after sending him the CD Don called me… and I could tell he was excited. He was like “John, we absolutely love this, we’re flipping out.” Apparently it took him that week to get back to me because he’d been waiting to play it for Davitt Sigerson (the president of the label at the time) and Brian Koppelman (the head of A&R).
Since we didn’t have any shows booked, the three of them asked if they could come over to the house where we rehearsed. At the time, I was on guitar; Jared Kotler… a somewhat-annoying friend of mine from high-school was playing drums, and our buddy Kurt Rosenwinkel was on bass. Some of your readers might know who Kurt Rosenwinkel is. These days, Kurt is considered by many to be one of the world’s most preeminent jazz guitar players and composers. His critically acclaimed albums on Verve and Blue Note have led him to tour the world, headlining all the big jazz festivals. But 14 years ago, Kurt was just a good friend that Jared and I had from Philly, who dug my music and enjoyed sitting in on bass from time to time. He also introduced me to the two people who would become Marcy Playground with me, bassist Dylan Keefe, and drummer Dan Rieser.
So, that night, when Don brought Davitt and Brian to see us, we only played five or six songs before they stopped us in order to talk. I remember at one point, after talking for a while, Davitt just folded his arms and said, “Alright so, I think we all agree… let’s make records.” And that was it.
EMI had a pretty dominant roster in the 80′s with David Bowie, The J Geils Band, Kim Carnes, Corey Hart, Kate Bush, Billy Idol, Queensryche, Tina Turner, and Pet Shop Boys. But by 1995 Alternative and Grunge had basically knocked all of those artists off of the MTV playlist, and the label realized, probably too late, the value of developing new talent. So we got lucky, in the sense that, I was being scouted by Don during this very brief window of opportunity in the ’90′s, when EMI was actively signing unknown artists. Besides us, their development roster included Fun Lovin’ Criminals, Five for Fighting, Patti Rothberg, Little John, and Jeffrey Gaines. Some went on to success, some didn’t.
Did they change the record?
JW:
No, and I know that that’s very unusual. I asked Davitt about going back into the studio to re-record everything, and his response was something to the effect of “Yeah, we just really feel like you guys have it here. We feel like this is the record, and it doesn’t really need anything else except for maybe a couple more to fill it up, since there’s only ten.” So that’s what EMI released, my demos from Sabella.
It took a while to choose a lawyer and have him negotiate the deal with EMI so, by the time I finally went back to Sabella to finish off the album, we had settled on “Marcy Playground” as the band-name, and I also finally had a real line-up, with Dylan Keefe on bass, and Dan Rieser on drums. The three of us spent a week at Sabella and finished the album off with a couple more songs. So, when all was said and done, our debut record, the one with “Sex and Candy” on it, took no more than two weeks to record and mix.
Actually, here’s a funny story about “Sex and Candy.” I’d written it in 1992 on a spring break home from college. It was now ’95-96, and I felt like it was a bit “over” for me. I’d been singing it for 3 or 4 years, and didn’t think it fit with the newer material on the record. At one point I was thinking about pulling it from the CD. Oh man, I remember Ken Gioia, who was our engineer at Sabella – and now works for Digidesign – heard me say that, and immediately jumped up and down, and was like “No way man, you’re nuts, that’s my favorite song!” He got pretty animated about it, so I figured I should probably leave it on. And, of course, it went on to be the monster that it was. So… thanks Kenny! Just goes to show, sometimes we’re not the best judge of our own material…
That’s how we got signed, the sub-context of which is that there’s no formula for how to get signed. And by the way, even if you’re lucky enough to get signed by a major, like we were, there’s still a lot of work you need to do before you can even begin to scratch the surface of success. Getting signed is the beginning of your journey, not the end. It’s like, “Welcome to OZ! You made it, good for you! Here, take these keys, and that 15 passenger van, and hit those yellow bricks over there, and someday you might actually reach the Emerald City… but probably not. Have a nice day!” So that’s what we did for about a year. And then the unthinkable happened; EMI (UK) restructured their North American operations and closed EMI Records in New York in the summer of 1997. We were on tour in California, about to play a show in Sacramento, and we got a call from our manager that we had no label, no tour support, and no way to pay for gas home.
When they shut down the label we thought, “Okay, that’s it, we missed our shot. How will we ever pick up these pieces?” The only real success we’d had on EMI came from opening for Toad The Wet Sprocket on their “fan appreciation tour” in the Spring of ’97. We’d only had one radio station in Fargo add “Sex and Candy” into rotation. They loved the track, and so did their listeners. They were doing really well with it but, for whatever reason, the label was unable to convert that yardage into points – so that’s where we were. We were done for. Stuck in Sacramento. Or, that’s what we thought. Because, as luck would have it, about the same time EMI was closing, Chris Muckley, the music director at 91X in San Diego had begun spinning “Sex and Candy” on his show, and was getting a huge response from listeners that shocked even him. Within the first week it was Top Five Phones – top five most requested song at the station – and within two weeks it was the number one most requested song on 91X. And this is a big station. 91X has a listening audience that goes all the way from San Diego to Los Angeles, reaching tens of millions of people. At the time Capitol Records (LA), and Virgin Records (NY) were each deciding which EMI’s contracts they were going to pick up, which they had the option to do. In our case, due to the success 91X was having with Sex and Candy, that August in 1997, we were moved over to Capitol Records, where the machine went into total overdrive on our album. So, we kept touring, and picking up stations, and by the time the charts locked out in December for the holidays, “Sex and Candy” was the #1 song in the country on Billboard’s Modern Rock chart. And it stayed there at #1 for 15 consecutive weeks.
Clearly that’s a story that’s for the most part from the bygone era. I can’t think of many songs for modern rock kind of bands that have done that. What has your experience been like subsequently, 12 years later? How have things changed?
JW:
Everything’s changed, dramatically. Let me address the bygone era aspect of it, because I couldn’t agree more. It’s never coming back. When you’re talking about broadcasting, you’re talking about an industry that suffered irreparable change at the hands of Bill Clinton, when he signed the Telecommunications Reform Act into law in 1996. That “reform” gave rise to companies like Clear Channel having the ability to come in and purchase virtually all of the nation’s large independent radio stations. The new law was supposed to create competition, instead it handed a near monopoly to Clear Channel. Prior to being taken over, stations could make a lot of choices on their own, but now their programming is tightly controlled by a corporate few. In some respects it’s been good, since Clear Channel has basically single-handedly wiped out something that has been a problem since the beginning of broadcast radio, which is the Mafioso-style control of radio programming by what are known as Indie Radio Promoters, or “Indies.” That’s a whole nuther story that I won’t go into right now. Suffice to say, Clear Channel has gotten rid of a lot of the indie promotion people. Yet, in doing so, they have replaced the indie as the gatekeeper in getting your songs on radio.
I think that’s why AAA (Adult Album Alternative or “Triple A” Radio) has exploded over the last ten years. AAA stations are the stations that broke Dave Matthews, Ben Harper and Jack Johnson. It’s the only format in radio that is currently growing. They have more flexibility in what they play; because they’re independent. Some are commercial stations, but many are non-commercial “listener-supported” public radio stations.
So the bygone era for commercial radio is never really going to come back. But there is a new era dawning for AAA Radio that involves the collective power of SIRIUS-XM satellite radio, Internet streaming radio, small independently owned commercial stations and, in particular, listener supported public radio. WXPN in Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania is a great example of the power of public radio. I think XPN, at this point, is probably the largest AAA station in the country. They rival some of the largest Clear Channel stations, serving millions of listeners. If they decide to break a record, they can. It’s strictly up to them. So, you know, you can have a hit, it just might happen in a weird way. If you look at the history of AAA Radio, you’ll see a lot of hits that happened in weird ways. “1234” by Feist is an example. It didn’t happen at commercial radio. It happened because her video was featured in a TV Ad for the iPod nano, at which point Triple-A picked up the song and broke it to their audience of millions. All of a sudden Feist has a top 10 hit in the US and is being booked on shows like Letterman and Saturday Night Live.
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Part II of my interview with John can be read here. Or you can check out the Marcy Playground Homepage
