"The paradigm in the music business has shifted, and as an artist and a businesswoman I have to move with that shift. For the first time in my career, the way that my music can reach my fans is unlimited."
ATOMIC PLATTERS: Cold War Music from the Golden Age of Homeland Security
Topic: Music
7:54 am EDT, Oct 21, 2007
Gold Star!
Every art form had to deal with the arrival of the atomic age in one manner or another. Some artists were reserved and intellectual in their approach, others less so. The world of popular music, for one, got an especially crazy kick out of the Bomb. Country, blues, jazz, gospel, rock and roll, rockabilly, Calypso, novelty and even polka musicians embraced atomic energy with wild-eyed, and some might argue, inappropriate enthusiasm. These musicians churned out a variety of truly memorable tunes featuring some of the most bizarre lyrics of the 20th century. If it weren't for Dr. Oppenheimer's creation, for example, would we have ever heard lines like "Nuclear baby, don't fission out on me!" or "Radioactive mama, we'll reach critical mass tonight!"?
Supremely sampleworthy. Be sure to check out the Conelrad podcast.
"The baseball stadium has been completed, and as I pass, I remember I have tickets for tomorrow night's game. I know now there will be no tomorrow night, because death does not attend a baseball game."
Rick Rubin says that the future of the industry is a subscription model.
After you've finished reading the Rick Rubin profile, consider the following from the invaluable Memestreams archive:
Larry Lessig asserts that over time, more and more people will opt to pay for music subscription services.
Steve Jobs: "We told the record companies the music subscription services they were pushing were going to fail. People don't want to buy their music as a subscription."
It's all part of the deal. Think of it as built-in obsolescence ...
Steve Jobs is dead wrong about subscription based services. There is a real business there.
Apple has made a very serious strategic error here that will not only undue their present leadership role in this space, but which damages the investments that their customers have made.
If you can get to the point where a lot of people are listening to your music without really needing lots of capital, the question is whether you'll need the music industry when you get there.
2007 has seen the two lowest-selling No. 1 albums since data began being kept.
Whenever I talk to a band who are about to sign with a major label, I always end up thinking of them in a particular context. I imagine a trench, about four feet wide and five feet deep, maybe sixty yards long ...
Real's Rhapsody music service is now available as a web service. So those of you who have been avoiding it no longer have an excuse!
The problem is that Steve Jobs ignores the music-as-service model ...
There is simply no good reason why you should ever walk out of Tower Records empty handed because the clerk said, "we don't have that in stock, but we could order it for you and have it here in seven to ten business days."
There is a world of difference between subscribing to XM or Sirius and subscribing to Rhapsody.
Real hopes that exposing consumers to digital music though the relatively familiar pay-per-song model will ultimately whet appetites for the all-you-can-eat model of its $10 per month Rhapsody service.
Fortune: Rhapsody, not iTunes, in my opinion, is the future of music.
In terms of value proposition, there can be no comparison; Rhapsody comes out leaps and bounds ahead.
In May, Rick Rubin, who resembles a medium-size bear with a long, gray beard, officially became co-head of Columbia Records. They didn't want him to punch a clock. They wanted him to save the company. And just maybe the record business.
David Geffen: "... it's no longer about making music, it's all about how to sell music."
Rubin: "There's just a natural human element to a great song that feels immediately satisfying."
"For some reason, most people will write 10 songs and think, That's enough for a record, I'm done. When they play the songs for me, invariably the last two songs they've written are the best. I'll then say, 'You have two songs, go back and write eight more.'"
"What's important now is to find music that's timeless."
"The kids all said the biggest thing in their life is word of mouth. That's how they hear about music, bands, everything."
"So many of the decisions at these companies are not about the music. They are shortsighted and desperate. For so long, the record industry had control. But now that monopoly has ended, they don't know what to do. I thought it would be an interesting challenge."
"Columbia is stuck in the dark ages. I have great confidence that we will have the best record company in the industry, but the reality is, in today's world, we might have the best dinosaur. Until a new model is agreed upon and rolling, we can be the best at the existing paradigm, but until the paradigm shifts, it's going to be a declining business. This model is done."
The "word of mouth" department will spread commissioned buzz through chat rooms across the planet and through old-fashioned human interaction.
Rick Rubin says that the future of the industry is a subscription model.
"My primary asset is I know when I like something or not. It always comes down to taste."
Oh No concocts 30 brand new beats, continuing Stones Throw's acclaimed series of instrumental hip-hop albums (following J Dilla Donuts and Madlib's Beat Konducta). For this latest Oxperiment, Oxnard, CA-based Dr. No researches raw and rare psych from Turkey, Lebanon, Greece and Italy to formulate his antidote to wack samples and played-out loops.
All Music Guide calls it "a kind of warm, nearly-poppy, guitar-filled trip into Middle Eastern chants, tight bass grooves, and drums that hover beneath the surface."
Dr. No's Oxperiment is a beat album, that much is sure, but it's more than that, it's more than music for the obsessed crate digger. It's rich and vibrant, like a marketplace, crates of oranges and nuts and olives sitting in the shade, the sound of vendors hacking their wares, everything necessary to the proceedings around it, a perfectly orchestrated expedition into an exotic landscape that somehow, at the same time, feels very, very familiar, all of which makes the record an exciting and very satisfying listen.
It sometimes seems as though this new technology is the major change in the popular-music scene. People may therefore assume that the continuing decline in CD sales represents merely a shift to music downloads. In fact, the decline is greater than that explanation would allow. People are buying less music today than in previous years. While the effects of downloading are often discussed, it's not just the music-delivery system that has changed. What we have long considered to be mass culture has increasingly become a collection of niche cultures.
"I finally tested positive for Pro Tools," he said.
I was curious to see if others have used this phrase before ...
The following are the results of your query. Keywords and phrases that have tested positive among your selected target-market demographic: esoteric, futility, satire-of-a-satire, artist, Pro-Tools, reclusive, symphonic, occult, Baudrillard, alchemy, meme, rackmount, ...
So, not much, but I also found these:
... Pro Tools has become the de-facto industry standard for editing in both the film and music industry.
... No everlasting Pro Tools-wanking here then, what you will hear is the real deal. No frills, just kills!
“I hate to think ‘what kind of music I play’… all that to me is shit, to be honest. You play what you can express and people gonna put a label in it.”
... their eruptive mixture of Central and South American folkways, with its propulsive rock rhythms, plus grooves reminiscent of The Gipsy Kings' crowd-pleasing Catalan rumbas, is incredibly infectious.
They had to busk to support themselves. In concert they still look as if they’re busking.
... a wicked, pan-European swing ... the impossibly fleet "Juan Loco" should delight all comers -- once they catch their collective breaths!
The album is a slap in the face for every rock star who has ever decided to arrange acoustic versions of their songs and forgotten that “acoustic” doesn’t necessarily mean “slow and boring.” Rodrigo and Gabriela went in the opposite direction, from electric to acoustic, and listen to the way they spit out that rock!
Though it's all quite excellent, Diablo Rojo is probably my favorite song on the album. The duo have recently released an official video for the song. You can also watch them live on Letterman:
Virtuosos Rodrigo Sanchez and Gabriela Quintero have created a sound that’s almost impossible to describe. Billboard called Rodrigo y Gabriela “one of the best guitar albums in ages; one of the best discs this year."
