Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh shares The All Night Party line: This is a great time to be in the music business. Of course this isn’t surprising, as I bought into Mothersbaugh’s “theory of devolution” in the Devo 1.0 era… the band’s legendary performance of The Rolling Stone’s “Satisfaction” on “Saturday Night Live” peeled my head clean open, and I was never the same! Still, it’s worth posting this contrarian perspective, after Stevie Nicks and John Cougar took their smelly dumps all over the future (still debating whether or not I should even respond to this publicly – lets just say I violently disagree!).
Aug 16
Aug.28th, at The Northside Tavern, ANP Release OFF
from The Sundresses w/Oxford Cotton and The Chocolate Horse
Aug 06
Should anyone be surprised that Yoko Ono still has a head-full of bad ideas at 77? In her recent Reuter’s interview she:
- Tells us not to hold our breath for The Beatles catalog to hit iTunes or the web
- Announces a re-issue of her late husband John Lennon’s “Double Fantasy” featuring remixes to the specs of his heirs and labels (as opposed to simply enhancing/remastering higher resolution versions that reflect Lennon’s own vision and tastes)
- Believes the remaining Beatles and fellow heirs are falling in line with her often bizarre perspectives and agendas
That middle one bugs me. A lot. John Lennon was one of the greatest musical minds of the 20th Century, and his approach to writing and recording revolutionized his industry. Yoko Ono? Ummm, not so much. While John adamantly stood by her as a creative equal, and he did some amazing work in collaboration during their marriage, it’s hard to view that period as a high point in his career. More to the point there’s no evidence that her musical contributions were significant, beyond her role in getting Lennon out of bed and into the studio, in a positive state of mind. She certainly deserves credit for being a hardballer in business, and making sure Lennon and his catalog were treated fairly. And I don’t blame her for breaking up The Beatles. But Lennon’s compositions featuring her voice, ideas or presence are among the weakest work in his catalog.
No one can argue she wasn’t a muse for a great artist. But she’s not in the same league musically. The only thing that separates her from a dilettante is her marriage. Creatively, critically, and musically her musical contributions are almost entirely failures. They obviously charmed and inspired John Lennon, and for that we should be thankful. Still, I shudder to imagine her cartoonish monkey mixes defacing his legacy. No one would pay Andy Warhol’s brother to repaint Cambell’s Soup Cans. But sadly millions will buy phony representations of Lennon’s work.
Aug 04
image cc courtesy Mandiberg @ flickr.com/photos/theredproject/
Investing in Artists: Consider a Promotionless To Popular Strategy First article at Music Think Tank has a few great points, and many holes. Essentially the author is saying that crowd-sourcing most if not all promotion is the only way to go. Anything else that works is a fluke. He goes further: if all artists followed the current conventional industry wisdom, musicians as a class of people would drive fans away in social settings, much like financial planners, lawyers or car dealers. I think there’s a lot of truth to this point. Readers intuitively understand people don’t like being “targets” for anything (especially advertising!), so they might accept his other points. The problem is, some of his other ideas are plain wrong.
The best show I ever saw was Big Black at the Jockey Club; I caught them by accident because I was working there that night, and managed to round up nearly a dozen friends after their sound check blew me away, but that was the extent of their audience. Years later they played the Southgate House, half full, yet in spite of critical raves and plenty of fans, they were on their break-up tour. Many of the best bands in the world fail due to poor promotion. On the other hand, no one has failed for too-effective promotion. Sure things are a little different in our viral, socially networked world. And yes, if every band suddenly got good at promo, it’s value would shrink, as fans tune out of your message. The TiVo effect is reality. That doesn’t eliminate the need for promotion, it actually increases it, but it also changes strategies. Valid, workable solutions are the opposite of “promotionless”; they have to be deeper and more strategic than ever, to cut through the noise.
The Old Spice Guy, played by Isaiah Mustafa, is a machine, not a real person. To go viral this machine required a team of copy writers, a video crew, and a strong IT backbone, driven by a very conventional PR push to encourage (or even pay!) celebs to ask him questions. Like the Tea Party, it’s powered by database driven design techniques, not grass roots enthusiasm or organic clicks and mails. It epitomizes modern dataesthetics, but from the outside it feels genuine and always fun. This campaign could never have been considered in a “Promotionless to Popular” paradigm. Aside from truly viral characters, like the Korean guitar playing kid or the Numanuma guy, no one really takes off effortlessly.
Amanda Palmer. Lady Gaga. MIA. OK GO. These are the best examples in the music biz of viral, organic fan-driven success. And yet none of these acts fit the theory posed in this piece. They epitomize the opposite: Pure 24/7/365 always-on promotion! Where are the examples supporting this theory in the real world? Bruce Warlia doesn’t offer any, maybe because none exist.
The non-existence of examples isn’t evidence that this is just too new or some sort of cutting edge thinking. Without examples it’s just a theory, and not an especially new one. It’s actually the core ethos of punk rock for the past 30+ years! We heard it from The Sex Pistols. We heard it from Mods in the UK in the early 60s too. Authenticity, rawness, and fan-driven style and fashion tie-ins are pretty old school. Likewise, rejecting contemporary promotional culture isn’t new… Who likes being the victim of a sales spiel? Let’s get real!
So why am I posting at all? Look at the comments below the article. This is Yet Another Bad Idea from Industry Central that tons of ground level working artists are buying into, to rationalize their failure. Unfortunately I see no evidence that it explains anything, since it’s unsupported and unsupportable. What am I missing?
Jul 28
Image Courtesy of VirtualMusic.tv
Brendan Mulligan, the founder of ArtistData now flush with SonicBids cash from their recent takeover, opines that rented music is the way to go over at Hypebot. While it sounds hip and enlightened, this is one of the scariest (and weakest) memes I’ve seen in awhile.
First of all, if you actually care what music sounds like the whole idea’s crazy. Pandora and Rdio soundalikeass! I’m not a snob, I’m just not deaf (yet)! 128K artifacts are ugly and easily audible, and that’s the best-case scenario streamed. This is fine for background listening, and for many people that means it’s good enough. But if you listen on a decent system, not computer speakers, the current streams are not ready for primetime. If recent bandwidth trends continue, this won’t be getting better any time soon; the unlimited bandwidth needed to get your music streamed is no longer the norm for iPhones, and most carriers are finding ways to limit demand by charging per megabyte. Meanwhile users are moving to smaller, data-driven smartphones with similar issues, and away from desktop broadband. Strike one.
If one accepts this meme, wither Sgt. Peppers, Dark Side of the Moon or Exile on Main Street? Concept albums and bodies of work are less accessible as sound, but we also give up the liner notes and packaging with the services you’re pimping. When you move to this new paradigm, the act of listening to music purely for its own sake becomes more difficult. You can’t invite a bunch of friends over to hear the new Flaming Lips record, unless listening is really just an excuse for drinking and yakking – drop outs and re-syncs are part of the experience, along with the $hitty $hitty sound, eliminating the possibility of pure musical entertainment. Even the bad-old CD can be fun to listen to as an album, when the music is good. Streaming makes pure listening rare or impossible. Strike two.
Keep in mind, once you board this train there’s no going back. It will disrupt, destroy and replace the old paradigm entirely. As the physical purchase market shrinks, economies of scale go away (vinyl sells for a permanent premium, because manufacturing capacity is capped and shrinking – no mfg has sold a new press or lathe in 20 years!). While it’s fine to discuss new models, cheering radically different and clearly weaker ones is dangerous, if not dumb. Be careful what you cheer for – if you get it, you’ll have creative blood on your hands, and be working a new, lamer music market. A rented-music paradigm is great for stars and bottom feeders, but puts sustainable middle class “jobdom” (new since the 90s in music biz) on the ropes. Strike three.
Ultimately this article feels like a surrender to garbage and noise, trading a rich heritage for ephemera. It’s weak on facts and analysis, pitching a scheme to move music permanently into the background of our lives. I don’t see it as visionary, merely dystopic punditry. The fact that so many responders are willing to give up on concept albums, sound quality, liner notes, tangibility, and a broad license to flexibly enjoy their music is alarming to say the least. Bah humbug, I say “Nay!” to Brendan Mulligan’s carelessly tossed grenade.
After cashing a fat SonicBids check, why not throw the rest of us under the bus? His ideas are great for ArtistData (who will track all these unpaid spins, and rent you access to metrics), and his new masters at SonicBids (the gatekeepers for festivals, and live booking, and more recently licensing, all unaffected by his bomb-throwing). Given the timing of Mr. Mulligan’s brainstorm, the attitude reminds me of Henry Hill’s famous line from Good Fellas: “F*ck you, pay me.” Ummmmm… no thank you?
