Chaos of the music business has become more interesting than music: Sasha Frere-Jones is a critic of The New Yorker and disappointed that the New York Times laid off the famed music reporter Jeff Leeds.
‘Music reporters may be more relevant than critics now. It is only a mild exaggeration to say that the chaos of the music business has become more interesting than the music.We need reporters who value critical thought as much as an early lead. Critics live on big ideas and dine out on punch lines. Bloggers shoot first, ask blunt questions, and aggregate the paid folks’ writing when it works. Leeds is as fast as the bloggers, a better reporter than most critics, and a good critic even when limited by house style to implication and artful association.’
Are we insterested in the music Radioplay has to offer or how they release the music? sames goes for NIN…
A Taste of Democracy: Nine finished” tracks from Guns N’ Roses’ “Chinese Democracy” were leaked online yesterday by the Web site Antiquiet.com. The links were removed following a cease-and-desist order from the band’s management.
Coldplay accused of Plagiarism: A less than stellar band from the US called Creaky Boards is trying to win their ticket to fame by accusing Coldplay of plagiarism. The band blamed Chris Martin for the alleged artistic theft, saying that Coldplay’s frontman attended a Creaky Boards concert in New York last year. Chris Martin says it’s a proven fact that he was in the studio in London, not attending a Creaky Boards show in NYC. We don’t like to give this lame band press, but here is the video from Creaky Boards. Also, if you listen to both tracks, only 4 notes in the song show a slight similarity.
iTunes: Apple has announced that consumers have purchased and downloaded over five billion songs on iTunes.
Radiohead Ticket Giveaway Fails: Radiohead were left with a raft of empty seats at a recent French gig after a ticket giveaway proved a utter failure. Singer Thom Yorke and his gang announced that 50 passes were available, but the fans would have to collect them by bicycle from record label XL’s Paris office. Their were 35 unclaimed tickets out of the 50 – stop with press stunts and just act like a band again…
Amazon Dabbles With Discount Prices: Amazon is now deep-discounting select MP3 albums, part of an effort to generate more excitement among music fans according to Digital Music News. Coldplay’s X&Y dropped to $1.99, along with the rest Coldplay catalog titles. Other albums will be dropped as low as 99-cents. ‘According to one executive, Amazon is now dabbling with “Russian prices,” a reference to the now-defunct AllofMP3 and other deep-discount sites, though lower-priced experimentation could raise broader sales volumes.’
The Rapper Bucks The System: Lil Wayne debut at No. 1 with a million units sold. “There’s no logical answer,” said Universal Motown President Sylvia Rhone of why consumers are snapping up Lil Wayne albums, but few others. “This is one of the most anticipated hip-hop records of all time. He’s more of a household name than people give him credit for.” Just think about it, every club goer is grinding to ‘Lick Me Like A Lollipop‘.
WWE Spikes Music Sales: ‘It broadcasts television shows in 130 countries and in 20 languages. It averages a weekly global audience of 47 million viewers.’ Impact on music sales from a WWE placement can be immediate. For instance, WWE featured the song “Leave the Memories Alone” by veteran hard rock band Fuel and spiked downloads to 8,000 during the next two weeks, according to SoundScan. WWE music director Jim Johnston wants to get the word about just how much music is used in WWE and said “The labels will stumble over themselves to get on MTV, but no one’s watching MTV.”
New Music Stream: Thriving Ivory’s album is now streaming on Vh1.
The Decline: Read the article ‘A brief history of the album’s recent decline in value‘ that appears in the Los Angeles Times. ‘Less than 10 years ago, it was common for albums to cost $15 and above. Apple helped redefine what the price of an album could be in the minds of consumers, but Steve Jobs’ company is far from the only reason that albums are costing less and less.’
Last.fm Adds Videos: Last.fm just added 12,000 music videos to its site today following a deal with Universal Music. The deal is funded through advertising. Warner just pulled its catalog off of Last.fm finding it not profitable.
New Study/ Thieves Pay For Music? Eighty percent of illegal file-swappers would be interested in a paying for a legal file-sharing service that gave them universal access to digital music, according to a new study. We think the study is full of it. I think someone just wants buffet of music for a monthly cost..
Court Allows Transfer of Promotional CDs: Troy Augusto who regularly sells promo CD’s on ebay was sued by Universal Music for copyright infringement. The court ruled against Universal.
Climbing: Carolina Liar is climbing up fast on the alternative rock charts. Check out the track I’m Not Over.
Recommended Listening: Take Me by Kingsley
Orphans Works Update: Congressman Jim Cooper (D-TN) and Congressman John Hall (D-NY) (formerly of Orleans and the only professional musician in Congress) will host a town hall meeting on the controversial “orphan works†legislation on Saturday, June 21, at 2pm at the Sunset Grill in Nashville. The event is free and open to the public.
ISP’s Embracing Music Biz: Read the article ‘Cash, not idealism, behind ISP embrace of music biz‘ that talks about ISPs wanting a piece of the fat ad/content pie.
Breakout Artists: Who are the breakout artists this year? can you name them?
Bandwidth Hogs: Time Warner Cable began a trial of “Internet metering†in a Texas city asking customers to select a monthly plan and pay surcharges when they exceed their bandwidth limit. AT&T is now considering a priced based on data volume. “The idea is that people who use the network more heavily should pay more, the way they do for water, electricity, or, in many cases, cellphone minutes.”
Recommended Show: San Francisco’s Magic Bullets kick off a short West Coast tour back in Seattle June 17 at Tractor Tavern with Beestings and Sweet Dominiques. The band will then be heading East for gigs including Pianos (August 6 and 7) and the NAMU Festival (August 9). Management is Rob Wells and legal is Chris Castle.
Sirius and XM Deal Almost Done: A key U.S. regulator expressed support for the 16-month-old deal, driving up both companies’ shares. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said he would support the transaction, with the companies agreeing to a series of conditions.
Recommended Listening: Still Young by Shirock
Myspace Gets A Facelift: Myspace will be launching a redesign of its site this week. The first phase of the project, internally called “MySpace 2.0,†will launch on Wednesday June 18. “The changes affect five major areas of the service: homepage, navigation, profile editor, search and the MySpaceTV Flash player.” You can see some screenshots here.
Rolling Past EMI: It looks like The Rolling Stones are ending their long relationship with EMI and will sign a new deal with Live Nation.
New Survey/ The War On Piracy: The largest academic survey of young people’s music ownership has found that teenagers and students have an average of more than 800 illegally copied songs each on their digital music players. “On average every iPod or digital music player contained 842 illegally copied songs”.
Guy’s World: We suggest you read the lengthly article titled ‘EMI’s New Boss Sees Cracks in Music World‘.
Rollez Stonez: Rolling Stone senior editor Austin Scaggs is starting a “Perez Hilton-esque” music blog for the magazine next month according to Gawker. Look at me, “I’m Famous”….
The Bad Music Movement…..
Since the dawn of popular music, there was always movement; a constant “progressing†in a fashion that defined each movement as an era. Generally speaking, these eras could be viewed in five to ten year spans. The musical difference (musical difference meaning the general sound of the recordings and artistic message) was obvious from 1950 to 1960, 1960 to 1970, 1970 to 1980, etc. But something peculiar happened towards the tail end of the 90s: It appears that since then there hasn’t been much progressing. So in 15-20 years from now how will we define the signature sound of the 2000s? Probably something like “the era of hyper-compressed, way too distorted, ear fatiguing music that is now classic because the music today in 2020 is so much worse. Haha, I really hope not, but certainly a song coming out today doesn’t have a sonic fingerprint that, say, couldn’t be heard in 2001. Indeed there has been great music in the past 8-10 years, but we all know that something has changed. There is a reminiscing in the air- passionate music lovers; people of all walks of life longing for a time when they could buy great CDs- new releases- every week remember those days? For those who say that there is just as much great music today, well then they also have to admit one of two things along with that theory:
a) This multitude of great music is not getting out to the masses anymore, or
b) The masses don’t t like great music anymore
The term masses is not to be taken with a negative connotation; I’m speaking of your average music lover, your everyday passionate listener. I guess they are gone because this tremendous amount of great, inspiring music is going unnoticed. The more likely scenario is that great music has greatly diminished.
All right, so if that’s the case there must be a reason, or perhaps several reasons all coming together to create the perfect storm for the invading bad music movement. I’m not saying there is anyone specific to blame, it is simply a cultural shift. I don’t claim to have any solutions but without trying to be too cynical, I would have to say that musical movements the way we once knew them could very well be part of our human history. Music will go on just fine and I’m sure plenty of great bands and artists will emerge in the future, however their relevancy on a pop culture scale will most likely be very limited (except for the very few). Let’s hope that’s not the case.
I have heard several people who are of the opinion that music and creativity has maxed out because there is only so much you can do and it’s all been done. Is music like a natural resource? Can it be depleted? If so, can it grow back? If it can, we need to start some music cultivation farms (oh wait, they used to be called major labels). But seriously, I do think it is harder to be original today than it was in the 70s or 80s. Also, great acts almost always take many years to develop and in today’s culture of people only wanting to be famous, the object of creativity has dramatically shifted. The mentality is more in the form of let’s just throw it down quick so we can go get famous.
The modern digital age has enabled bad music to be mass-produced very quickly and the wannabe famous artists in the basement are flooding the airwaves. Great art is a long labor of love that few people have the time for these days. Add to that the fact that there are fewer live venues for budding artists than ever before. Many of the great acts we’ve come to know in the past honed their craft by gauging the reaction of real people. They could see the faces of the audience when they tried out their new material. If your audience were falling asleep during that new song, maybe you would think twice about ever recording it. Bands and artists are at a huge disadvantage who cannot perform live or don’t have venues to do so. Instead of playing their instruments they’re at home playing with their computer mouse.
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