a comment worth reading

Coolfer notes Pitchfork's review of Diamond Nights

this, from the comments section, is spot-on:

the indie scene and the insufferable element it fosters has always existed to validate egos that were tarnished by the more "popular" elements of high school. Maybe Sonic Youth loved and loves Sabbath but in the beginning (and now, to a large degree) they still self-identify with indie, not the mainstream. The most active, vocal supporters of indie have ALWAYS looked down at bands that attracted any sort of frat attention, and immediately cry "sellout" the second that an indie band crosses over from obscurity to the mainstream (R.E.M., Nirvana, Pumpkins, etc.) It's the indie losers who are the credibility police, not Joe Six-Pack.

It's also this breed of indie-centric buttholes who make an exception for mainstream hip-hop, which, in case you don't know, is full-on frat party music and has been since the Beastie Boys in 1986. Whether it's fear of being branded a racist or something altogether different, your average indie record store clerk will be happy to profess love for Kanye, 50 Cent, etc. despite the massive marketing effort and total rockstar sellout nature of hip hop. Because, you know, you gotta stay hip with the kids, even if the misogynist overtones are loud and clear, as long as it isn't Limp Bizkit.

And if we need any further proof of the truth in all this, look at the disdain that the indie community has for modern country music: unless Nashville comes out with something novel like an African American rapping on a mainstream country song (note the notice Big & Rich and Cowboy Troy seem to get in indie circles), it's cast aside as something basically irrelevant.

There's no such thing as a big open tent in the indie community, there never has been, and it's been purposeful. That's because "different" always equals "somehow better" to these people. It is an insular culture that absolutely fosters exclusion in an attempt to keep the jockos far, far away. Without this perverse attitude, people wouldn't have to worry about having "guilty pleasures". They'd just listen to what they liked.

the sky is falling; living in an ecosystem of one

In Praise of Ecosystems

It's actually fairly surprising that something so dim could find its way to publication.

The assertion that Apple operates in a closed system completely ignores the iron fist that Microsoft has on the rest of the market. Since when is Apple's DRM (FairPlay) any different from WMA? The only difference is that in this rare occasion, Apple controls the market instead of Microsoft.

The logic of this article suggests that if Apple will fail with the iPod, then so must Microsoft.

The Mercury Prize has jumped the shark

Coldplay???????

An interesting (if hard to read) article on why micropayments won't work in music

upay: micropayment barriers

Scroll about a third of the way down to avoid the icky graphical boxes. The text gets better from there.

Music Kiosk

Music Kiosk Provider Burn-A-Song Selects SyncCast to Power New CD Burning Service

Questions:

#1 - Can I bring my iPod to Burn A Song and just download to that?
#2 - Why would anyone want to bet the farm on yesterday's technology knowing that implementation and market acquisition will probably take a couple of years(burning CDs)?

Answers:

#1 - No, this technology is wedded to Windows Media. It's as much as a closed system as iTunes.

#2 - This idea will ultimately fail.


Observations:

It's not a bad idea entirely to offer music at a variety of retail locations i.e. you hear a song in Abercrombie that you like, you want to buy it immediately rather than go all the way home and download it from iTunes.

A better solution would be to be able to purchase the song at the store and have either a) the song emailed to your home or phone or b) be able to download it immediately to your iPod.

Instead, we have a company embracing old, rinkety technology in an era where the burn rate virtually ensures failure.

the Digital Music Age as a subject of peer review

First Monday Special Issue Number 1

An essential compedium of digital music links, these articles are peer reviewed.

JD Considine weighs in on long album reviews

Resonance: Who Likes Short Shorts?

“This is where I’m obliged to play the heretic, because while there are many things wrong with music criticism today, short reviews is not one of them. Much as I would like to believe that great insights are being choked off as the average review’s word count declines, my experience is that the opposite is true. Less really is more.”

Now, if only someone could tell Pitchfork this.

Single song downloads triple growth to 6 percent of overall music sales

Billboard PostPlay picks up from Yahoo that digital distribution is not some sort of geek fantasy. It's happening, the data is here, and critical mass isn't far off.

Notably:

“The data confirmed that Internet users are moving away from piracy on peer-to-peer networks and gravitating toward pay-per-download sites like Apple's iTunes.”

Technorati Tags: digital, distribution, downloading

Mark Cuban says the podcasting fad is the same as the streaming fad

And he's right.

It's nice that Apple is putting a face on podcasting.

But as Cuban notes, the tail is very long on podcasting, just as it was with RealAudio streaming back in the late 90s. Hey, anyone can do it, right?

Streaming is still a nice concept--you can still pick up radio shows even if you are out of range. I can listen to Jim Rome or Rush Limbaugh on my computer, streamed live daily if I want.

So in that sense, podcasting is nice because it gives a Tivo feature to streaming. But if Jim Rome or Rush Limbaugh or Howard Stern or Mancow or whomever thinks I'm going to pay for a podcast--when I can listen to it for free--, they're nuts. Because "free" still trumps "having hours of a talk radio show on my computer or iPod to wade through every day.

Similarly, it's easy to see how podcasts could turn into RSS feeds. I follow over 90 feeds every day, or at least try to. But I can skim through and ignore things that don't interest me. A podcast of even a half hour presents a far bigger problem, let alone a three hour podcast of someone like Jim Rome. I'd have to spend a lot of time on the fast forward button, and as anyone with an iPod knows, that's not really part of the aesthetic of using an iPod.

That unique streaming didn't catch on--quick, name someone making money from their streaming stow--tells me that podcasting may suffer a similar fate.

The market has spoken.

Washington City Paper: Ad Nausea: "We're left with this sad fact: The only high-profile rock criticism consistently worth reading can be found in a magazine whose mascot is a fop looking at a butterfly through a monocle. The New Yorker published a Lethem memoir about listening to Brian Eno that offered more insight into its subject than any of his so-called criticism. And the magazine respects in-house rock critic Sasha Frere-Jones enough to give him room to write long. He's allowed to follow his ear, covering everything from semi-obscure grime to MF Doom to Keren Ann, all of which he's required to make accessible to an audience that's probably more likely to buy The Mussorgsky Reader than any book about Wilco.

Even better, he doesn't blow a big word-count on recollections of high-school dances or dedications to Billy Corgan on his birthday. He's become one of the most thoughtful rock commentators around, and he's never even written a novel."

This an article decrying the lack of good, extensive rock criticism--kind of ironic to blow 1,000 words on the subject rather than use the space for, well, a long review. A few comments:

First, I'd say Robert Christgau has proven that penetrating insight on an album can be done with a few hundred words.

Second, the market doesn't want long criticism. A signficant reason for this is the utter lack of need for 1,000 or more words of in-depth wankery on 99.99% of the 40,000 titles released every year. Most of pop music isn't high art, even incidentally--it doesn't command in-depth, exploratory criticism, it doesn't inspire it, and even when it does, there's no market for it. There is so much being released that most reviewing outlets defer to quanity of reviews in order to cover a wider scope. This is a logistical issue as much as anything else.

Third, most critics are so busy trying to wade through the avalanche of records put in their mailbox that they don't have time to spend a couple of days writing one review that won't get read.

Recorded Music Sales Decline As Downloads Gain Traction

Billboard PostPlay: Recorded Music Sales Decline As Downloads Gain Traction

via a shrill site called "boycott riaa".

The fat lady has been summoned to serenade the compact disc. She's not singing, but she's warming up.

More on the digital future and where opportunity lies

The Long Tail: Updated music data: "The result of these two trends--online expanding, offline
contracting--is that the market is shifting even more towards niches.
Last year music that wasn't available at Wal-Mart accounted for 23% of
Rhapsody's business. Now that's 28%. Some of this is due to the
statistical effect of Wal-Mart carrying fewer CDs and the vertical line
below shifting to the left, but even at last year's level Rhapsody is
seeing demand shift gradually towards the niches (its 50% line, where
half the demand is ahead and half is below, has shifted from rank
12,000 to 12,500). "


To add to my previous post: what does Rhapsody have that it's competitors (current and future) don't? What does Wal-Mart have? The barriers to entry are so minor, it's easy to assume that it won't be long before anyone with a customer base will be able to sell music online. Lifestyle shopping.

Why doesn't Google sell music? Yet?

Target Aims At Music Subscriptions - Forbes.com

Digital distribution is flattening barriers to entry, those strategies of market deterrence that were once reserved for companies who could afford expensive, worldwide physical distribution.

So if Target wants to get into the biz (following Apple, Microsoft, WalMart, Yahoo, Napster, eMusic, etc.) then isn't digital distribution simply the leveraging of an existing (effective) brand. In other words, if Target then why not Abercrombie & Fitch or any other mall retailer? Why not your local record store? In fact, why isn't your local record store teaming up with Apple in an alliance to distribute iTunes? Because in order to be an effective digital distributor, all you need are eyeballs.

Think about it: you can already use ITMS Link Maker to push vistors to your music. And you can use the iTunes Affiliate Program to make money off of it. While the return isn't good, that's not really the point anyway given that the investment is so low. The point is that the paradigm is shifting, the early adopters are giving way to the next wave of users. And when that happens, you're going to shop at the store with the library that fits your sensibilities best or the one that has the best relationship with you. Because everyone will be able to sell everything.

The most important concept in the music industry...

...is the Long Tail. The concept--essentially mass customization and the resultant mass of niches in its wake--is fully explained here in The Long Tail: FAQ.

The author, Chris Anderson (an editor at Wired), originally wrote about the The Long Tail in his magazine and it generated lots of interesting response, including a lot of denial from people who are intent on applying the "homerun" strategy to the music business. The digital revolution has eliminated or greatly reduced several key cost factors in making music (distribution, recording, etc.) and the Long Tail does a fairly good job of explaining the resulting opportunties.

Simply put, if you haven't read the article yet, you need to. It's the future staring you right in the face.

NY Times: Grokster decision doesn't matter

The Imps of File Sharing May Lose in Court, but They Are Winning in the Marketplace

The money quote: "Last week's Supreme Court decision 'will have little or no effect on file sharing,' said the project's founder, Ian Clarke, who is based in Edinburgh. American companies hoping to commercialize file sharing might find life more difficult, Mr. Clarke said, but companies based elsewhere, or anonymous software creators uninterested in profit, 'will continue to work on new, faster, and more powerful file-sharing applications, for as long as there is a public demand.' And in the borderless, largely ungovernable world of the Internet, it's that public demand that ultimately dictates the future."