Well Done to the Hot Press fooools!!!

stez

Well, Congrats to Hot Press on another fine marketing scheme.
I was just on their website which I had never checked out before. It seems they are running in conjunction with FM104(the number of the beast), a makeover competition for men. What a joke, it makes me puke.
I wanted to express my feelings on this on the Hot Press message board. When I tried to do this, I discovered you had to register as a member. To register as a member, you have to pay 10euros. What a f*cking disgrace. Is there no limit to the money grabbing depths that Hot Press will sink to??? Silly question really.
I suppose by linking up with FM104 in this fashion and also by giving them full page glossy ads in their excuse for a magazine, means they fully support the FM104 music policy. Ha ha, Hot Press you sick fools, you never fail to make me laugh, especially with your 2 or 3 pages of sex line numbers. Niall Stokes, you should be ashamed of yourself, Phil Lynnott and Rory Gallagher are spinning in their graves!!!

Respect to Phantom for your FREE message board.
If any Hot Press employees happen to stumble across this post, please do not hesitate to explain yourself. I can't imagine they would though as this board is only looked at by REAL music fans....

Trev M

So glad someone else posted this , I didnt at the risk of sounding like a ranting anti christ all the time.....in short Hotpress is nothing short of appauling in fact eh... I would go so far as to say I would rather cut my jewels off than give them a breath of support about anything . There is nothin.....nothing.... of redeeming quality to mention about Hotpress.

Rant rant rant rant!

Tyrrial

i've discovered that it's not that easy to start a rant about something, although hot press need a good kick in the áss! so be prepared for people to shout you down... or change the suject to get your thread deleted (i'm looking in your direction drowner:D)

roit grrrl

Just when i thought that they could stoop no lower, tut tut!

eddiesheridan

Hotpress had the launch of the yearbook a few weeks ago in which the editor, Niall Stokes gave a speech about the state of play with Irish radio stations. He noted that the successful Irish acts this year were not championed by the Irish radio stations but by Advertising agencies. Niall is a lone voice here and must be applauded for doing so. Who else is trying to get radio programmers to open up their schedules to Irish acts ?



This way to the underground

SimonMaher

Don't even get me started on Hot Press.....in fact, can't be bothered.

Wasn't Mr Stokes Chairman of the Independent Radio and Television Commission for 5 years? Did we see his Commission award licences to stations willing to champion Irish acts then? Oddly enough, no. Has Hot Press under his editorship pushed for the licencing of such stations? Oddly again, no.

Words are easy, but is the actions that make a man. He has had more opportunity than most to do something about it, and didnt.

Regards,

Pete Reed
Phantom FM

James_M

Bang on Pete,

If you think about the huge amount of musicians who went out and bought the yearbook (myself included), it makes sense that Mr. Stokes is going to provide some shpeal (how do you spell shpeal anyway?) about being pro irish indo music, keeps us gimps happy.

Tis all only lip service (the talking kind), not worth a toss in my opinion, not with the resources that man has to hand.

acquiescefc

Is it 'spiel'???

Unless you have a lisp, or would that be lishp, oh shpit

joey D

hot press has turned into a glossy advertising brochure masquerading a music magasine, no doubt about it...

thedrowner

Originally posted by Tyrrial
i've discovered that it's not that easy to start a rant about something, although hot press need a good kick in the áss! so be prepared for people to shout you down... or change the suject to get your thread deleted (i'm looking in your direction drowner:D)

tyrrial....a) i thank you. i quite marvel at my ability to make a thread turn a corner which just 3 dirty words out of my foul litle mouth (ok...big gob)

secondly....i thinkyou're taking this thread shutting down thing a little too heart. everyone here likes to see a good debate, mr reed included, im sure. i just think the dance ad one was a little close to home and was more speculation than fact so it got a little slaggier than it should have.


and now on reading that i think i am talking things a little bit too seriously

i will reply to this thread and all other propper debate ones after me exams are over and i ahve time to read everything.

stez

Yeah like c'mon to fook. He's joining forces with the EVIL FM104, when do they ever play new Irish bands.....I'll tell you when, when everybody is jumpin on the band wagon of Samantha Bleedin Mumba or The Poxy Corrs. That poxy station have one crap show of "alt" music, on a Sun. night I think, when most people that might consider listening to it are in the rub a dub dub.
Stokes is a hypocrite and I'm gettin a pain in me ring here talkin about the fool, so I'm off....

super_furry

What always confuses me is.....exactly who buys Hot Press? I mean, someone must be, otherwise they'ld stop producing it. But I don't know anyone that buys it, I can't recall seeing anyone buying it at least a year and very few people ever have a good word to say about the magazine. So own up, who's responsible for it's continued circulation?

Trev M

Super Furry .....you have truely inspired me........an inquisition is what's required. We must collectively pool our resources to eliminate the rodent like lifeforms that are buying this tripe.

Paul Hare

Well I buy the Hotpress regularly. I don't agree with everything in it, some sections I don't read at all but I find it informative. They haven't being too bad to our band. They wrote a good review about us, they shorlisted our band in top 75 bands in Ireland.
They now have extended the Demo Dip section to more than just a half a page. Its now two glossy pages long. Plus they are reviewing alot of unsigned bands live gigs and Cd releases.
Aswell they had a huge section on how to setup your own record label and release your own album CD, giving all the contacts and advise you need, so not too bad.
They sell this magazine all over the world, and I got word that a friend of a friend from New York read our review and wanted to say well done.

About FM104, its sad but true that they've played our CD more times than Phantom. I would love it to be the oppposite . Its being played on the Going Underground show on Sunday nights aswell as the late shows after 1am.
I personally don't listen to FM104, I'm a phantom radio fan through and through but there is proof that they are playing unsigned Irish and in joining with the Hotpress I think they are trying to extend that area.

Now I'm not happy with alot of things about the Hotpress. I do think there is way too many photos of Looney Walsh and Bellefire but its good to have a laugh at them!!
But I'm not really clear on what there role is, what are people expecting from them, in the end of the day they are a business who have to make money, aren't they? Aswell is there anything else out there?

I can't believe NIall Strokes would write such comments about the lack of Irish music being played when he could go on and suppport Phantom FM. What Pete Reed wrote about him being part of the commitee and he could have had some influence over it, just makes no sense.
So there are things that bit by bit make me not want to buy the Hotpress but in the end of the day I do.


OK people try to convert my opinions and make me one of you


Paul

www.ginsengmusic.com


P.S. Ohh and don't hate me for my opinions

SimonMaher

Hi Paul,

Thanks for a very well thought out post! Im not really going to get into the "Is Hot Press any good?" debate here because they havent exactly been friends to us in the past. For that reason, I'll keep quiet on that area.

You mention that Ginseng are getting played on FM104 late on a Sunday night and after 1am otherwise. Just out of curiosity, do you think that your music deserves to be pigeonholed into one specialist show or lost hours overnight radio? Why do you think they won't let your song see the light of day during hours when people might actually be listening? If your CD is of sufficient quality do you not feel it warrants airplay at a reasonable hour? Or are you a "sure its better than nothing" man?

And if Irish bands can't get played at a time when people are actually listening, do you not feel that Hot Press and Mr Stokes should be campaigning in print for these bands to be played in the daytime? Is it not somewhat unusual that they aren't? Particularly given the speeches that Mr Stokes makes such as the one that started this debate?

These are general questions by the way, not just aimed at you! There just seems to be an odd contradiction between words and actions going on here.

Regards,

Pete Reed
Phantom FM

Trev M

Now we're talkin. As an active participant of the Irish music for several years I am constantly amazed at peoples lack of ambition and negativity in relation to challenging what is perceived to be the status quo.
Paul with respect, I think your post is symtomatic of an overall attitude that exists in the music community in Dublin and the rest iof the country ie. we should accept what is given and be glad for it, when Stokes and that twat Stuart Clarke and co spout their rhetoric at the "amatures" i,e us and people buy into it , it devalues not just you and your band but all of us actually "listening" to irish music , actually buying independantly released stuff i.e YOUR DISC Paul.
Personally speaking I find the token gestures given to bands nothing short of offensive and the fact that Hotpress' idea of helping young bands is to offer them ad spaces the size of a postage stamp for 200 quid is laughable.
Hotpress can spout all the rhetoric and give all the regurgitated ****e(Advice) they like between their pages and say its supporting the music scene but in reality we all know its a rag with Ads for sale and a lap dog for the industry fat cats, a machine to hoodwink the "punters" to pay 100 euro to MCD/Aiken etc for an hour of neil young hahahaaha what a joke. Anyone who is serious about rejuvinating the scene needs to understand that it will happen only wirth action not with reviews and useless advice , people need to be encouraged to get out there and find whats on their doorstep, this city is unbelievably talented but is consistently stifled because of greed and the need to make a quick buck. Venues dont give themselves a chance to develop a crowd and charge rediculour prices, distributors are creaming stupid margins of the top for releasing a local CD etc etc HOTPRESS DO NOTHING TO HELP THESE ISSUES AND ARE ACTIVELY PART OF THE PROBLEM , this is just my personal opinion. With respect to Paul I acknowledge the many active and on going contributions you and your band have made to better the scene for everyone but I respectfully have to say I think you are more than generous with your praise for Hotpress.

All the best - Trev

fat toni

right on.....lets take to the streets......burn down hotpress hq.......
if this was france there would be a proper revolution right about now........death to hotpress......remember hotpress is slowly becoming the new RTE GUIDE........

Paul Hare

Ok. Thanks for replying guys, really interesting words.
Pete in reply to your question at the moment for us it is better than nothing.. Everything that is a positive step in the right direction is good for us.
In the end of the day all we can do is stick our heads down and concentrate in what we think we are good at and that's creating and playing music. We believe that everything else will fall into place. We are currently recording an album which we feel really good about, if it turns out **** well I don't expect anything from anyone, its our fault for not succeeding, Man I hate sitting where I am at the moment in work, I want to be a full time musician. I want to give up the day job and have musical success.

I don't really know much about what the Hotpress's Niall Stokes and Stuart Clarke have done or not done. But I'm not going to complain to them about the way things are going with music in Dublin.
Its not a bad city for music really when you think about it. I've being to other cities where they only have a couple of venues and bands wait months to get a chance to play. We are lucky to have a radio channel like Phantom playing on the airwaves, we really are, when I first came across the channel one day I nearly collapsed with happiness. Somebody is playing the music I love, no need for a cassette or cd-rom walkman anymore, just give me the smallest walkman radio and I'm happy. Less expensives in the battery department, so I've saved money from Phantom being in existence!

Let FM104 play there commercial music for the commercial listeners and let Phantom play the music they want to play, its good to have the choice of stations.
I don't expect our band to be played on Country FM, Pulse FM, 98 FM, Radio 1 etc.,.

About my praises of the Hotpress, I don't praise them, I just read their magazine, and I don't really look much deeper into it than that.

Just explaining myself, I do agree with all your points. I hope I'm not losing track on the discussion.

Paul

Glowingmind

At this point i'd just like to suggest that everyone takes a look at Foggy Notions magazine to see just how far downhill hotpress has gone.

Trev M

Are you prepared to ellaborate?

Trev M

Interesting that Ive linked the thread on the GigSmart board and got a few responses on it....now there's two ways of I have looking at it....

GigSmart is packed full of dissaffected wanna be's...(raising my hand in fairness)

and / or

Most people involved actively in the scene feel pretty similar to me (more likely)

I have found this pretty interesting overall and suddenly dont feel like Im slighly loopy with my passion for absolutley "not liking" Hotpress hahaa
:ninja: (What a great smiley just noticed him now)

Thomas from Presence

From the Gigsmart Discussion Forum:

personally, I don't, and have never bought or even read an issue of Hot Press... when I was in "Cousin it" we won the hot press ignition and part of our prize was an interview with hot press which concisted of some spa looking down his nose at us for two mins like we were the scum of the earth and should feel privilaged to meet with such a high ranking journalist. that was the last straw, well the penultimate one anyway, the last straw was the other part of the prize, a "free" recording session in "apollo studio" which, when we went to claim it turned out to be a "half-price" session in "electra".... we never even bothered. All this after we PAID £100 to enter the competition, then had to sell tickets to break even.

During my time in Gigsmart I've heard this story and similar ones so many times. One can argue for a magazine organisation ignoring the lower end of a scene to cover more financially rewarding aspects but one cannot excuse any organisation who actively misleads and capitalises on the hopes and aspirations of talented unsigned acts.

Their support for other dubious organisations (lets call them garage world for now) also leaves a terrible lot to be desired.


Hopefully through posts like these we can destroy the mystery allure associated with hotpress and prevent them from using their name to profit off the backs of those who put so much faith in what they appear to represent.

miju

I absolutely ****ing deplore Hotpress.

Those bastards got Irish Music Network's site taken offline for a week becuase we were accused of "stealing" their directory.

THATS BALLS BTW HP KNOW IT AND WE'VE GOT THE PROOF THAT IT TOOK US 3 YEARS TO COMPILE OUR ONE - THEY ARE PROB JEALOUS COS OURS IS BIGGER AND WE DON'T WANT MONEY FOR OURS(just to dispel any rumours)

In fact Duan Stokes e-mail to myself was something along the line of "it's quite obvious you stole our stuff" what a prick if they we serious about supporting music why do they not once mention IMN even though I've asked them a million times. Because what we're trying to do is something along the lines of Gigsmart except we're not concentrating on gigs we're more about releasing records and promoting bands through other ways (sorry rant over)

BOTTOM LINE HOTPRESS ARE **** AND DON'T HAVE THE SLIGHTEST INTEREST IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE IRISH MUSIC SCENE

Cozpyro

By sheer pure coincidence I have just been looking at copyright law in relation to the Tickemaster / Rolling Stones fiasco.

You cannot protect Ideas facts or knowledge through copyright. The only thing you can copyright is the manner in which this information is presented.

There is nothing in theory to stop you from sitting down with the phone book or indeed the Hotpress directory and writing down this information yourself.

The precedent is set out in Ticketmaster v Tickets.Com March 27 2000. Its all on GigaLaw.com. You can find a link to this website through this link below:

http://stonesfiasco.myikonboard.com/viewthread.php?threadid=4

Ste k

that giglaw and precedent was in america, and unfortunatly means didly squat over here.

There is such thing as intellectual property which covers the right of knowledge, techniques, intelligence and ideas.

Check out the law library if you like its in there somewhere i'm sure.

Cozpyro

I got this from The World Intellectual Property Organization

http://www.wipo.org/about-ip/en/

Intellectual property refers to creations of the mind: inventions, literary and artistic works, and symbols, names, images, and designs used in commerce.

Intellectual property is divided into two categories: Industrial property, which includes inventions (patents), trademarks, industrial designs, and geographic indications of source; and Copyright, which includes literary and artistic works such as novels, poems and plays, films, musical works, artistic works such as drawings, paintings, photographs and sculptures, and architectural designs. Rights related to copyright include those of performing artists in their performances, producers of phonograms in their recordings, and those of broadcasters in their radio and television programs.

I'm not 100% sure but as far as I know things such as telephone numbers and event dates etc cannot be copyrighted as these do not fall under the banner of Intellectual Property.

Maybe someone who can speak Legalese can shed a bit more light?

spoiltbrat

About 6 months ago now I got involved with IRIS in the hope that I could do something good towards promoting all the bands and music out there that is ignored by our national music rag.
The problem with Hot Press sums up exactly the problem with the music scene in Ireland in general.

People start with an idea, open the doors to people with more ideas, and when they have a formula that works they close them again.

Look at No Disco as an example (please don't come down on me again for this) - it became a bit of a clique in the sense that if you were leftfield enough and got your best mate to stick together an arty/cheap video it got on the show. Don't get me wrong - this was great for some people but unfortunately most Dublin bands aren't all that leftfield.

As far as I know Hot Press was great when they didn't have the highest ABC readership bull****. Money corrupts and the obligations that come with it put pressure on people to stick to what they can get away with and not take chances on new talent. If Phantom went legal I really think it would be hard for it to hold onto its programming principles - look at the fuss that was kicked up when somebody put on a dance/indie ad for The Sticks!

Anyway my point is - check out our site now before people start throwing a load of money at us and we give in to writing endless Corrs, Bellefire and (if we feel a little bit adventurous) Frames reviews.

www.irismagazine.net

events@irismagazine.net

Thomas from Presence

All I want is for somebody to throw a load of money at me to prove/disprove if I can keep my principles!