December 31, 2007

December 21, 2007

December 20, 2007

Labels: David Byrne, iTunes, self-released musicians

December 14, 2007

Labels: 1980s, 1981, Bill Wyman, Friday Flashback Fun, The Rolling Stones

December 13, 2007

December 10, 2007

But it's a bit unrealistic to expect five dour introverts from Oxfordshire to come up with a universal fix to save the record industry. The Radiohead payment scheme, whatever the final tally, worked for Radiohead. (It may be portable; Paste, a magazine devoted to indie rock, ran a monthlong pay-what-you-want subscription deal in the wake of "In Rainbows.") And yet at least some aspects of the old model may still prove useful. The CD of "In Rainbows" -- an actual, tactile, old-economy product -- will be available in record stores on Jan. 1. And EMI, the band's spurned label, has proved resourceful itself, quickly assembling a Radiohead boxed set in time for the holidays, happily riding on publicity it didn't pay a thing to create.

Well, we knew that CD sales were going down really badly, and we knew all about this peer-to-peer ratio, where 1 legal download is like 51 illegal downloads. So we thought giving it away for free is like -- "bang, in your face" -- giving it away for free has a really big punch. Whereas Radiohead... I love that idea. They're a genius band, and what they're doing is really interesting. I think ours is just, kind of different, really.

I'm all for self releasing your music when it's feasible, but what's with giving Radiohead the credit for an idea hundreds, nay thousands, of other bands have been doing for years? Silly.

December 07, 2007

Labels: Dolly Parton, Friday Flashback Fun, Porter Wagoner

December 06, 2007

It's worth noting that digital audio files will get better, just as compact discs did. (In their first decade, CDs and CD players sounded dreadful, worse than MP3s -- and much worse than some other, less-compressed, downloadable formats -- sound now...) When this future comes, we will all rejoice. In the meantime, to deny or dismiss the sonic differences not only deprecates the depths and delicacies that make music so alluring. It also tells the engineers and manufacturers that they don't need to improve their products, that bad sound is good enough.

December 03, 2007

Currently digital music retailers don't seem to have figured out the value of giving their customers the opportunity to interact and form communities. Amazon users can submit reviews to its MP3 store or rattle off their favorite songs with its "Listmania!" function, but there’s no way for them to just talk to one another. There's no way for them to feel like their music expertise is making a difference -- and it goes without saying that customers can't meaningfully influence the store's inventory or how it's organized. No one on Oink would've stood for finding Pink Floyd's The Wall filed under "Dance & DJ," but it's the number two album in that category at Amazon.

"It's not how I consume music personally," she says. "But I also think that it's the way people like to listen to music and acquire music, so if I want to represent my artists I better try to embrace it." She also looks on the bright side. "There are positive things about it -- people can have more music during the day, you don't have to carry a bunch of CDs in your backpack. You carry more music with you so you can spend more time with music, and that's cool. But I'm too old school for that. If I have a record that someone has been like, 'Check this out,' and I like it, I'm gonna go buy it. It doesn't feel like I have it, to me, unless I have it."