Podcasts, Writings, Psychedelics, Spirit
Hey, don’t get me wrong. I love music discovery as much as the next rock snob museo. But why does Pitchfork only review bands that a) no one has ever heard of b) no one cares about c) and no one will ever care about?
To the best of my knowledge Pitchfork has never broken a single act. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
Sorry to rant and bash these guys, but I just don’t get how they stay in business and have the CPMs they do.
I’m happy to have found this via Dangerous Minds. I’ve wondered this for so long, now I know. There are many circumstances when one must whip it. DEVO!
Of all the random ideas aimed at creating new music business models on the web this feels like it makes the most sense. Take two already embraced consumer water holes, Facebook and Pandora, and tie them together. Duh.
Reprinted from DMM:
Remember when people used to sit around and listen to music together? Of course, those moments still exist, but the digital music experience is often a private pleasure.
So how to reconnect? Pandora is addressing that question by integrating itself into Facebook, a huge move towards networked listening. At a top level, the integration allows friends to quickly share stations with their Facebook friends, part of a much broader “Open Graph” build-out for Facebook. Pandora is a major component of that expansion, and was discussed prominently by Mark Zuckerberg during a keynote at the F8 Developer Conference on Wednesday.
The idea is delightfully simple and connected. Pandora users can easily link their Facebook profiles and friends into their stations, or, opt-out to remain private. But why not hold hands on this new discovery commune? “I’ve been testing out the service while we were developing it and I have to say it really brings a wonderful new human dimension to the listening experience,” Pandora founder Tim Westergren relayed.
Features Anushka Shankar, Wayner Shorter and Chaka Kahn. All on one track. Really.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjLFG0i2_AE]
I posted this a couple months back on my old Tumblr blog. It’s so good that I had to re-post. “Giddeon” live on Letterman a few years back.
“These new series reflect Generation ‘Why Not?’ — living, working and playing on their own terms, ‘adventure capitalists’ if you will, pursuing a variety of thrill-seeking, 2.0, express-yourself enterprises,” says MTV entertainment president Brian Graden.
I’m not even sure what that means. I’d love someone to tell me. That sounds like lots of buzz words or one of those great marketing cliches that are spawned out of one of those DIY phrase generators. What is a 2.0 express yourself enterprise?
One one hand, I’m glad MTV doesn’t matter much anymore. It’s pop culture relevancy has pretty much gone to shit with emphasis really being handed over to tweens. On the other hand, there was something cool about great videos having a centralized viewing location. I guess that belongs to YouTube now?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLhoLkTyNkM]
Rod Stewart, Ronnie Wood, Kenny Jones and Ronnie Lane tearing this song apart. So good. It’s interesting too that at this time “Maybe I’m Amazed” was a relatively new song, Paul M hadn’t put it out too long before. Really cool how The Faces guys knew it was a gem. Dig it!
A short follow up to yesterdays story…
I’m of the opinion that you should embrace audience behavior. You should cater to how audiences are interacting with media, go to where the people are, make their overall experience better. At this moment in time that means going wide on your release. There are only a few anomalies where the opposite is true – AC/DC and The Eagles most notably. Those acts are so big and so dominant that they can manipulate contracts and buys ins to work in their favor financially. But, can either band REALLY say that they won new fans with Wal Mart exclusive CD only deals? I say no fucking way. Furthermore it is certain that they left money on the table by not going digital.
New music fans are all over the web, doing all sorts of things. Trust me when I say trying to figure out where they are and what they are doing is a full time job. We do know, however, that the low hanging fruit (i hate that phrase) is iTunes. It’s easy, it’s practically ubiquitous and its fun to use. I 100% wish it wasn’t the only option. It just so happens that no one has come along and done it better. It’s so funny to me when people get on an anti iTunes rant or talk about how Steve is bullying the music business. Steve’s POV is really simply – i’ve made the best product. so I’m going to run it the way I want. If someone comes along and makes a better product they will have leverage and currency to spend. It’s that simple. Take the Kid Rock example – he went CD only for most of his campaign, then gave the digital rights exclusively to Rhapsody which then went on to sell a whopping 3000 pieces. Reason being: Rhapsody sucks.
I’m not sure what the moral of the story is. I know this, anyone who says that they have the current state of the music business figured out is lying. It’s a brave new world. A wide open frontier. Yes, sales will shrink but we still have to find ways to create that passion for music consumption that fans once displayed. It’s still out there. Forcing them to go to Wal Mart isn’t the answer. Selling exclusively on iTunes isn’t the answer either. Finding out what your fan really wants and expects is the answer – how that manifests is anybody’s guess.
This has been flying around for the past couple of days: the Smashing Pumpkins aren’t going to make any more albums. Corgan saying “There is no point. People don’t even listen to it all. They put it on their iPod, they drag over the two singles and skip over the rest.”
There are some case studies to support this attitude and there are some that don’t. First, let’s talk about the ones that don’t. I’ve been listening to TV On the Radios “Dear Science” non fucking stop and I’m not the only one. This is one hell of an album. It flows beautifully. It’s full of soul, electro pop, great guitars, new wave meets the digital age and you can even dance to it. If the Pumpkins last album was even in the same ballpark as “Dear Science” I think Corgan wouldn’t be spouting off trying to place blame,on off all things, iTunes. Why is he blaming iTunes? The a la carte model is such a short sighted and obvious mechanism to place the blame on. So what if it’s new school and flies in the face of the classic album model? The fact is that while today’s audience does have a shorter attention span there are still some music fans out there that will listen to your whole creative statement if it’s good enough. Yes, it is true you will sell exponentially more singles than complete albums, but so what? The Smashing Pumpkins built a pretty substantial legacy with the likes of Gish, Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie. Those are some of the great albums of that generation. Giving up now and blaming the audience (and Apple) for doing so is sad.
Robert Plant and Allison Krauss, Ryan Adams, Fleet Foxes are doing it…hey even Axl Rose gave it his best shot. I hope Billy Corgan reconsiders.
To be fair and to look at the pure economics of it – yes, it is a singles business. The emphasis being put on “business.” Coldplay gave away “Violet Hill” to the tune of over a million free downloads yet they sold over 100,000 copies of the single on iTunes. Amazing. An artist can learn more about their audience and how they spend time online by giving away a free track using Top Spin than they can anywhere else. Small little digestible bits of art is where audience mentality as a whole lies, but that does not mean that a great album goes unrecognized.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxW3Ed7GrhQ]
Kitty Daisy & Lewis – Goin’ up the Country
My pick of the week. Totally retro and stylish in the best way. I’m curious to see if these English lads will break out of the classics and start writing their own stuff.