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A Nemo blog. Dealing with uncommon cents.

Leave it to Billboard Magazine, a scion of the fading music industry, to resort to old media tactics. This editorial on their web site is worthy of discussion but unless you happen to subscribe to the magazine for $24.95 a month you do not have the ability to comment. Clearly what happens as a result of this madness is that Billboard’s music business subscribers can hold up this editorial as a sign of “things aren’t so bad after all chaps…” and then continue to ignore the future of their business whilst looking backwards at the good old days. [Ironic note: check the image above and note the arrow in the right corner and the line 'Teen music spending drops.']

It’s not my ego nudging me to write that I can’t help thinking Steven Wilson is talking about my article, ‘The End of the Album as The Organizing Principle‘ when he sarcastically writes about ‘industry experts’ here – “Reports that CD sales continue to decline—they fell 14% in 2008 compared with 2007—have once again inspired a pundit-led roll call of the music industry’s dead and dying institutions: major labels, record stores, terrestrial radio and the CD itself, to name but a few. Recently added to the obituary page is the album itself, thanks to industry “experts.” However, I’m happy to say that the reports of the album’s death are greatly exaggerated.”

I am pleased to say I don’t consider myself an ‘industry expert,’ at least not a ‘music industry expert.’ Although I have had a long career as a professional musician [Gang of Four, Shriekback] and have run record labels etc, I would rather be remembered for jumping feet first into the future of music by joining eMusic.com as GM in 1998.

Unfortunately Wilson’s editorial completely ignores what is actually happening at the MP3 stores that he mentions – Amazon MP3 Store and Apple’s iTunes – music fans are buying more single tracks and not so many albums. He recognizes that the vinyl album is making inroads into the market place once again but he misses the point about the end of the organizing principle whilst admitting that people don’t have the attention span these days – “When the computer becomes a listener’s main source of listening to music, it’s hard to focus for 40 minutes, let alone 70.” It’s not about the computer Steven, it’s all about the Cloud and what Rio Caraeff, EVP of Universal Music’s eLABS understands when he says “the browser is the new iPod.” The browser is everywhere on almost all mobile devices, millions of them around the world – and users are not listening to album after album on them, most likely they are listening to their own playlists.

And here’s Wilson’s killer ‘make the recording industry feel better’ moment – “…. the argument that technology killed the album is a diversion—the mere availability of downloadable music is irrelevant to the question of the format’s viability.” The part of that statement that I have bolded out is simply an idiotic statement.

Technology doesn’t kill anything. In fact it moves things forward. For artists, technology and the advent of almost ubiquitous broadband has brought unparalleled freedom of expression. I wrote in my article, with regard to the early technologists who devised the album-length organizing principle, that – …..musicians and bands were not part of that decision in the first place then why would they complain of what modern technology now brings – their craft has been unchained from early technological limitations and they now have endless amounts of time and bandwidth to spread their creative message far and wide; along with unfettered artistic control.

I also wrote –
How music was delivered used to be in the hands of the few – bands, concert promoters, record companies and their retail distribution companies, radio, and video shows such as MTV. In tech-speak this system embraced ‘push’ – we the mighty and powerful will “provide you” [at a price determined by "us"] with access to our treasures when “we” feel like it. These days that system is rapidly breaking down as music fans now ‘pull’ what “they” want to listen to.

Control has moved from the few to the millions of many. Dull labels and dull bands offering dull, flat, non-experiential product – e.g. a CD, will go the way of the CD as it goes the way of the Dodo. Consider what Cirque Du Soleil provides as an experience compared to Barnum and Bailey’s circus. Or Burning Man compared to your average music festival. Even the Las Vegas Beatles-themed show ‘Across The Universe’ wipes the floor with most rock concerts these days.

If these ideas and opinions, not to mention the debate around them, are ignored, then the recording industry and Billboard Magazine will definitely follow the CD into extinction…

Spin The Black Circle

McLuhan and Vinyl? I know – I sometimes stretch an idea to its snapping point but isn’t that why I bother to type all day?

Here goes – As I sit on the panels I’m invited to I often forget to remind myself that at the heart of all my discussions about music and technology the root of it is about my enduring passion for music.

Computer technology, especially web 2.0, has fooled many of us into thinking that we now have a “new” way of communicating. That is simply not true; we forget that Marshall McLuhan pointed out decades ago new technologies simply create new environments – the old environment then becomes the content of the new environment; Facebook simply allows us to digitize our Rolodex. The computer and its keyboard are the medium in this particular message. Our constant need to remain in touch with friends and family endures, and still will well beyond technology.

We should really be considering technology’s effect on the individual and society. Remember, e.e. cummings warned that “progress is a comfortable disease.” So where does music with its myriad genres and forms, its emotions and passionate responses, its common currency, fit into a “technological” culture?

Well consider this – Music is the medium is the message; bear with me here.
If music is the message then in McLuhan’s terms the vinyl record can be described as a technological extension [the medium] of the musicians body. The medium then creates the environment that produces effects [the media.] This then has an effect on society and culture where the starting point is always the individual – that is, you and me. McLuhan also advised against a rigid separation of the physical from the psychological.

If we then consider that the physics of media have changed yet the media that provides the atmospheres has not, and we understand that the effect is still psychological and can not be separated, do McLuhan’s ideas help us unravel the mystery of what innately binds us to the rhythms and lilts of music around the globe? [My argument carries over into live performance too where the instruments are extensions of the players bodies.]

Vinyl racks at Music Millennium Portland

Anyway, on to my thoughts about vinyl.

In a world of 320kb MP3s, FLAC, loss-less this that and the other files, I’m going to take a leap of faith here and hope that many of you jump in too – my premise is that a vinyl record surely has to be the purest embodiment of our universal love for music. It’s the closest thing to experiencing music live that I have heard. When compared to A to B, with A being an analog record and B being a CD, A wins every time for me. I share Neil Young’s comments in the digital vs analog wars – Young has acknowledged the benefit of hiss-free recording that digital technology offers, with the caveat that “along with the hiss went depth of sound and the myriad possibilities of the high end where everything is like the cosmos, exploding stars, echo.” [Read more of this discussion here.]

Digitizing music has made music more affordable and provided ease of use in portability but at the huge expense of having the emotional range, the highs the lows the rumbles, removed in the process. What we have been hearing on CD is a compressed version of a digital slice of the possible range of sound available to our ears. At live shows the bass sub woofers in the PA system allow you to literally ‘feel’ the bottom end, on CD or MP3 that experience is simply not available to you. Yet, when you play a vinyl record through a great hi-fi system you can experience it in a recording.
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