Author Archives: Dominika

Simple Plan hang out with TOTALFAT and Tonight Alive

Yesterday when at the Osaka edition of the Punkspring festival (that continues today in Tokyo, Japan), the members of Simple Plan also took the time to hang out a little bit with their fellow musicians, who were also on the line-up of this festival.

From the pictures that Shun, one of the members of the Japanese melodic hardcore band TOTALFAT, posted, you can see him hanging out with Pierre and David from Simple Plan and in the picture with Pierre you can even spot Chuck talking to Jenna McDougall, the lead singer of Tonight Alive, who Simple Plan toured with in Australia in 2011.

Check out the photos below:

Pierre Bouvier on streaming services vs royalties


A very interesting article by David Friend at The Canadian Press was released today at CTV news. The post deals with the hardships that current musicians, who are not at the very top of the success ladder, experience when it comes to not being able to receive any significant income from the popular streaming services, such as Spotify or Apple Music. The article mentions even Juno-nominated artists sometimes receive checks for just “3 cents” for being played hthousands of times on Spotify. However pulling own music from such services (as artists such as Taylor Swift have previously done) would only mean such musician would completely distance himself and mostly his music from new possible audiences.

Pierre Bouvier from Simple Plan has been quoted in this article numerous times, explaining why a band like Simple Plan can feel helpless when it comes to music streaming services, even if they have millions of digital plays on their account.

“Bands like us are standing on the sidelines. We don’t really have the power to change anything. There is not a whole lot of money to be made unless you’re the top one per cent … streaming a billion … then you’re just swimming in it. But if you’re streaming a million … or 10 million that’s not really going to pay you anything.”

According to the post that is “one reason [Pierre Bouvier feels] less optimistic about the next generation of musicians hoping to make a living off recorded music.”

“I feel like if my kids told me right now [they wanted to get into music] I’d be like, ‘Forget about it.”‘

PHOTOS: Simple Plan perform at Punkspring in Osaka

Today Simple Plan performed in Osaka, Japan at the first day of the Punkspring festival, which also included bands such as Sum 41, Misfits or Tonight Alive in the line-up, and the band seemed to have a really good time. Pierre was once again sporting his own band’s merch (his favorite racoon t-shirt) and interestingly Chuck changed his drumhead to a different design than his drums rocked for the whole European tour – you may recall the new drumhead from the single cover of ‘Opinion Overload’, just with some minor color changes.

You can already have a look at some of the first pictures from Simple Plan’s performance at the Osaka Punkspring in the gallery:

PHOTO: Simple Plan backstage at Punkspring today

After a couple years, Simple Plan finally returned to Japan, where they already performed for thousands of local fans at the Punkspring festival today. The band just shared a cool group picture of all the band members from the backstage area of the festival, which you can now check out in the gallery:

Simple Plan arrive to Japan

After almost a week at home, spending time relaxing with their families and loved ones, it was once again time for the members of Simple Plan to hop on a plane – this time heading to Japan.

David was the first of the group to arrive, followed later by Sebastien and Jeff along with their crew and Pierre and Chuck arriving the last. Some of the guys already updated their social media with some pictures from their first day in Japan [check them out here in the gallery] and you can also check out Simple Plan’s Snapchat (simpleplanmusic) for the latest video update from David.

Simple Plan will be spending a couple of days in Japan. The band is set to perform at the PunkSpring festival in the upcoming days and then also at a couple of solo Simple Plan shows in Tokyo and Nagoya.