music

Tragic Tuesdays

Tobias Car­roll and I have been hav­ing a spir­it­ed back and forth over at his blog, the Scowl, where we’ve been dis­cussing how best to incor­po­rate leaks into the edi­to­r­i­al cal­en­dar. I argue that leaks are an indus­try norm that need to be treat­ed as such, rather than an aber­ran­t behav­ior bet­ter ignored.

He writes:

And giv­en that release dates still have an effect — their rela­tion­ship to tour­ing comes to mind — I don’t know that there’s an easy way to make this work. Also wor­ri­some is the fact that it essen­tial­ly hands over con­trol of the process to par­tic­i­pants in what could at best be called an eth­i­cal­ly grey activ­i­ty, which, while arguably prag­mat­ic, doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly seem like some­thing to be encouraged.

As far as I’m con­cerned, so-called pirates have hijacked the dis­course sur­round­ing the music indus­try for over ten years. This “eth­i­cal­ly grey activ­i­ty” threat­ens to sun­der an indus­try that failed to accept tech­nol­o­gy into its busi­ness mod­el, and a con­sumer base that does­n’t seem to care one way or the oth­er what hap­pens to it.

Con­tin­ue read­ing →

The Release Date Ritual

Think­ing about the music indus­try’s con­tin­ued com­mit­ment to release dates got me think­ing about the Roy­al Tenen­baums. You remem­ber the scene where Eli Cash is on a show very sim­i­lar to Char­lie Rose and he says, “Wild­cat…was writ­ten in a kind of obso­lete ver­nac­u­lar”? I think release dates are part of the music indus­try’s obso­lete ver­nac­u­lar. I’m guess­ing not many on the label side would admit it pub­licly, but they will even­tu­al­ly. Release dates just don’t mat­ter to any­one any­more. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

After the Gold Rush

Call me crazy, but I think the music indus­try is bro­ken. Sure, it’s still pos­si­ble for bands and man­agers and labels to make mon­ey, but it’s get­ting increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to do so. The con­tribut­ing fac­tors are too numer­ous to men­tion, so I’m only going to address the one I can con­trol in my pro­fes­sion­al life: the pro­duc­tion of edi­to­r­i­al con­tent. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Smashing Pumpkins Anniversary Tour

I laughed when I read this at Pitch­fork. They threw a sim­i­lar tantrum when I saw them in July 1996, play­ing 20 plus min­utes of feed­back, alleged­ly because they’d been asked to play longer to avoid traf­fic snarls with the crowd leav­ing a Phillies game. Some things nev­er change, huh?

These 90’s reunions would be much more appeal­ing if the bands could seri­ous­ly get their acts togeth­er. I’ve skipped Stone Tem­ple Pilots and Smash­ing Pump­kins sim­ply because I expect­ed both to be dis­as­trous, not to men­tion that it feels too soon for these reunions. (I’m look­ing hard at you too, Pavement.)

SXSW Music Festival 2009

As I read this post over at Goril­la vs. Bear, I could­n’t help but think, “Who’s actu­al­ly going to SXSW next year?” I went for the first time in 2008 and had a lot of fun. Sure, I was lead­ing a team on a gru­el­ing four day mis­sion in desert heat for my day job, but that’s the trade­off. It was a cool expe­ri­ence. But will I go back next year? Prob­a­bly not.

Why? There are a few rea­sons, but let me start with the most obvi­ous. Few peo­ple care about SXSW cov­er­age, even among indie enthu­si­asts. The blo­gos­phere is glut­ted every March with chat­ter and video of new bands. It’s the sort of noise that turns peo­ple off. It’s also not all that inter­est­ing when many of these bands will criss-cross the coun­try on their route to Austin, or as they depart. Why go when the band will be com­ing to you anyway?

And video? It’s impos­si­ble to shoot, edit, and cut fast enough to keep it inter­est­ing. I talked to my friend Bran­don at Stere­ogum about how tough it is to make SXSW cov­er­age com­pelling when the audi­ence is fed up by the time the fes­ti­val ends. I don’t even know if I saw Pitchfork.tv’s cov­er­age on their site! It’s dis­heart­en­ing because this is the sort of con­tent pro­duc­ers want to work, main­ly because few out­lets can pro­vide HD video on-site, which keeps it above the ama­teur shaky cam shots you see all over Youtube. It’s a great idea that has­n’t yet been real­ized. Maybe Qik and oth­er livestream­ing prod­ucts will make it work, but we’re not there yet.

What does that mean? It means going back to basics. It means out­lets big and small will send few­er cor­re­spon­dents, if any, to cov­er an event that grows larg­er every year. SXSW has defied the odds as the music busi­ness con­tracts, but I won­der how it will fare as the econ­o­my con­tracts as well. I sus­pect that they’ll see few­er cor­po­rate spon­sor­ships, which will make those pesky, fun free shows more dif­fi­cult to pro­duce. SXSW may regain con­trol of its beloved fes­ti­val, but who’ll pony up for those lame cre­den­tials? All the fun stuff hap­pens at the unsanc­tioned events!

2009 will be an inter­est­ing year for the music indus­try as fes­ti­vals and entre­pre­neurs try to buck con­ven­tion­al wis­dom. (If you haven’t read Idol­a­tor’s take on the Top­spin mod­el, I rec­om­mend you do.)