Record Industry crashes, dies

[alistarr*]

oh i understood it was free to readers - i just thought that it was customary in deals like that either for the artist to pay the paper to distribute the thing for promotion's sake, or the paper to pay the artist to promote the thing for distribution's sake. if he's just giving it to a newspaper then that's pretty interesting.

[edison]

wait, i thought it was coming out as a free gift with a sunday paper. no money is being exchanged anywhere over working that one out?

I think it involved a very lucrative contract, to be sure.

Also, I'm not sure it's wise to use Prince as an example for the evolution of the record industry, because, hmm.. it's Prince - we'd know if anything he did made any sense, right?

[edison]

or the paper to pay the artist to promote the thing for distribution's sake.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's what happened in this case - too lazy to research it though, and I should be doing stuff, damn, it's 10:38am!

[mackro]

I posted something close to the following on a separate list, so I'm probably going to derail the context of this thread as it stands now, but just wanted to put in my two dollars here (again):

When the slip-shift occurs, it won't be like the end of "Turk 182" or
"Network" or anything.  The big folks on top are going to have one
motherfucker of a golden parachute, while the artists and those below
who really put their love behind publicizing, promoting, and working
on the music get screwed the most. (Just imagine that one scene in
"The Hudsucker Proxy"... you know, for kids!)  Unless he or she is
married to someone at Rockafella Records or is already famous as a
celebrity, there's almost zero incentive for any unsigned artist (who's
not fucked up already) to sign to a major label directly at this point,
period. (Not counting smaller subsidiaries.)   That's not a secret anymore. 
Ask Sir Paul and Starbuck's.

However, all the articles gleeful for this utopia are equally as
shortsighted as the major label heads.  If artists cut out every
middleman available to sell digital downloads directly to Da Kids, how
is that going to sound?    Well, like bedroom music, basically.  Sure,
software has been able to make home recording sound quite a bit closer
to professional recording, but they will never be the same thing.
Forgive me for the Jeff Chang reference but to paraphrase him:
Aesthetics never is separate from one's background.  Not everyone is
going to adopt the bedroom-to-mp3 model.  There still will be a subset
of the industry for the types of records we've been hearing all our life,
whether we like(d) it or not.  The people distributing that music will
just be different wings of the same people who brought it to you
before... just broken down into smaller labels or perhaps under
even bigger non-traditional companies, that's all.

The same stupid fights regarding the RIAA or what not are *not* going
to go away.  In fact, the absurdity level to which people will try to
inflict obscenely high royalty rates and try mafia-esque tactics to
fine downloaders will even become more escalated as the cache (ca$h?)
dissolves.  Just because the labels might become smaller doesn't mean
the lawsuits are going to be less ridiculous.  (I mention this
because, I'm assuming, a lot of people think that the end of major
labels will mean the beginning of free downloads for everyone for
anything.  At least, that's the weird sense of idealism I'm hearing.)

The other side of the depressing future is that if you think the
overall bar for sound quality is terrible now, just wait until a few
years from now.  The mass markets will be happy with severely
compressed music, as the majority of music will become ringtones.
Cellphones will be the most prevalant form of purchasing songs.  Japan
is already there.  Trial programs have begun in the UK, and are
proving quite successful.  The U.S. will eventually follow.  This
won't be the only form of music available, but this is where
"mainstream" is heading as it dissolves, as radio is now in its last
throes of decaying and meaning anything anymore -- even college radio,
sadly.

Many of you don't care for mainstream pop music, which is totally
fine.  I spent most of the 90s completely and happily ignorant of top
40 radio as I was in college radio in Orange County, CA at the time.
(KUCI to be specific.)   However, I grew up on Top 40, and I currently
find a small fraction of Top 40 to be very enjoyable, which is roughly
the same fraction that I find in independent music.  I'm going to
sorely miss the bombast, the excess, all the silly arguments about
that new song you hear everywhere sucking or not.  Talent won't go
away, but there will be less people wanting to make that classic
produced, pristine, and soulful 3 minute and 20 second pop song that I
go back to all the time, no matter what decade, whether it's Tony Bennett
or Madonna or Queen or Missy Elliott -- even after listening
to other great stuff like the new Pan Sonic or Pissed Jeans or Pig
Destroyer albums or what have you.

...

I ad hoc'ed this, so I'm sure there's plenty to tear about here.

[SPACERACE]

i tl dr'ed that when you namedropped 3 movies i've never heard of in the first couple sentences.

[Andrew_TSKS]

reese, you've never heard of "the hudsucker proxy"?

[joseph scott]

...or Network?

By the way I assembled all my thoughts (plus a couple extra) pertaining to this thread and did a couple of ranty posts at pgwp this week. I may keep going... haven't even gotten to the whole internet radio thing yet.

[SPACERACE]

i might've heard the latter in passing. the former, no.

[Andrew_TSKS]

"hudsucker proxy" is a coen brothers movie starring tim robbins and jennifer jason leigh. it was the movie the coen brothers made between "barton fink" and "fargo", if i remember correctly. from 1995 or so.

[SPACERACE]

that's wonderful

[Greg Nog]

It's really quite excellent, just so you know.  Particularly if you like snappy patter.

[Maaik]

...and hula hoops.


Also: Bruce Campbell

[difficult]

"hudsucker proxy" is a coen brothers movie starring tim robbins and jennifer jason leigh. it was the movie the coen brothers made between "barton fink" and "fargo", if i remember correctly. from 1995 or so.

It was supposed to be their big studio breakthrough movie, was very expensive and something of a big flop disaster at the time.
Has stood up better than most of their more recent films though, and I expect it would be in profit now... Maybe?

[John]

"I tl dr'd that when cultural touchstones practically everybody shares were mentioned"

[John]

anyhow Brian I liked most of that, except, y'know, sound quality schmound quality - that's something of a paper tiger I'm convinced. Poor sound quality carries its own aesthetics which as we've seen in the past can make for interesting areas of work; I don't believe in a great chain of sound quality about whose purposes we're all agreed.

also to Reese: referencing isn't at all comparable to "namedropping," especially when two of the three names checked are practically basic cultural touchstones. (Seriously dude. Knowing the Network basics is no less basic to U.S. film literacy than knowing what "Luke, I'm your father" refs.) Turk-182, OK yeah, you have my permission to ring up a dude who refers to "the ending of Turk 182," sorry mackro but that compares better to "the original drummer from Squirrel Bait." Which may have been one word, not two, who cares, not me this morning.

[alex]

"I tl dr'd that when cultural touchstones practically everybody shares were mentioned"

Eh, for what it's worth, I'd never heard of any of those movies before, either.

I never made any claim to US film literacy, of course.

[John]

Alex you are from Austria, totally no fair!

damn I wish I could see Vienna again, I dug that spot

[alex]

I just felt like backing up Reese there against the movie aficionado hordes! (only kidding about that last part) Plus it's not like we don't get all those movies over here in the cinemas too, only a few months later and in crappy dubbed versions.


And I kinda wish you'd see Vienna again, too.

[SPACERACE]

also to Reese: referencing isn't at all comparable to "namedropping," especially when two of the three names checked are practically basic cultural touchstones. (Seriously dude. Knowing the Network basics is no less basic to U.S. film literacy than knowing what "Luke, I'm your father" refs.) Turk-182, OK yeah, you have my permission to ring up a dude who refers to "the ending of Turk 182," sorry mackro but that compares better to "the original drummer from Squirrel Bait." Which may have been one word, not two, who cares, not me this morning.

i said namedropping because it was the douchey option and that was what i was going for. i've never seen the network, doubt i ever will unless someday i'm on a couch somewhere, half-drunk, and it happens to be on shotime. i just don't watch movies, i've been over it before. they give me a headache, and i have to get up every 15 minutes.

and john, poor sound quality does have aesthetic qualities, but they just don't apply so well to all instances of music. the way it's recorded is, i think, half the art of it (even when it's done well enough that you don't notice it at all,) and while a deliberately shady recording might add wonderfully in some cases, it takes away just as much from others. this is something i feel pretty strongly about, as i bet you already know.

besides, the type of shitty sound we're getting into with this whole 'digital age' isn't like the quaint, warm, friendly analogue hiss and scratch of tape, it's badly-calculated digital compression, which just hurts to listen to. i've heard you complain about MP3s before, this is where things are going and that's why i'm worried.

[joseph scott]

anyhow Brian I liked most of that, except, y'know, sound quality schmound quality - that's something of a paper tiger I'm convinced. Poor sound quality carries its own aesthetics which as we've seen in the past can make for interesting areas of work; I don't believe in a great chain of sound quality about whose purposes we're all agreed.

I'm with John on this. Most music, I think, can be enjoyed on any old speakers, through any old medium.

and john, poor sound quality does have aesthetic qualities, but they just don't apply so well to all instances of music. the way it's recorded is, i think, half the art of it (even when it's done well enough that you don't notice it at all,) and while a deliberately shady recording might add wonderfully in some cases, it takes away just as much from others. this is something i feel pretty strongly about, as i bet you already know.

I think is true, too, but you're describing two ends of a wide spectrum. There's a vast ocean of music in between Ryuchi Sakamoto or Pan Sonic and Lou Barlow or Elliott Smith.

And as far as digital compression being worse for music - that may be the case but I would imagine that if the format of music is shifting to files rather than discs, some computer genius will figure out a way to make the new format sound good. (though personally I don't really notice much difference except for in a few instances.)

[SPACERACE]

there is a vast ocean, and most of it is recorded decently. "lo-fi" as a genre is actually pretty durn small. a few people managed to do well by using noisy recordings and shitty sound to their advantage, but not everyone's music is conducive to that, and in addition there are different shades of poor recordings, some of which just wash out subtle cues, and some which enhance them. but finding that line is not easy, and it's pretty arbitrary, so just trying to make it sound decent is a safer bet.

that second paragraph is a bit naiive, i'm sorry to say. there will be no computer genius that will save MP3s, because they're already what they are. there are plenty of other formats available which offer better sound at similar filesizes, and no one takes advantage of them because everyone uses goddamn ipods. i'm sorry you don't hear a difference, but i feel safe saying that you could pretty easily.

fun trick for anyone that doesn't believe MP3s do anything all that bad is to take two instances of the same song, turn one into an mp3, reverse the phase on the other, and play them both back at once. what you hear is what the compression process removed.

also, all music can be enjoyed on any speakers, it's just even more enjoyable on excellent equipment.

[Trousers and Pat]

besides, the type of shitty sound we're getting into with this whole 'digital age' isn't like the quaint, warm, friendly analogue hiss and scratch of tape, it's badly-calculated digital compression, which just hurts to listen to. i've heard you complain about MP3s before, this is where things are going and that's why i'm worried.

I don't know, I feel like they probably didn't start calling those old noises warm or fuzzy until they started to develop an appreciation for them. Someone pops in a tape or whatever and is like "wow this sound is so shitty" but then his friend sits up from where he was lying on the floor and says "no man, that's 'warm.' I'm lovin it!"

As for quaint I guess people are still at the stage where newer digital shortcomings sounds like a malfunction, instead of reminding them of their youth or "simpler times" (ugh)

[mackro]

Ironically, I'm movie illiterate too.  Most of the movies I've watched in my entire life was within the years 1984 to 1987, where my mom rented VHS tapes every night.. so I know a whole bunch about brat pack movies, the occasional Coen Brothers movie, some classics, and that's it!   For some reason, I'm one of 10 people who remember Turk 182.  And I also posted that later in the night than I should have.

ANYWAY, I'm not all up in your undies about sound quality... however, the difference between playing a CD or mp3 in a media player and playing a file on a *cell phone* today is tremendous, as far as compression and playback difference and experience.  I meant to stress the cell phone thing more than the sound quality thing... cell phones carry their own attached cultural baggage of which I'm not too fond, granted.

[SPACERACE]

besides, the type of shitty sound we're getting into with this whole 'digital age' isn't like the quaint, warm, friendly analogue hiss and scratch of tape, it's badly-calculated digital compression, which just hurts to listen to. i've heard you complain about MP3s before, this is where things are going and that's why i'm worried.

I don't know, I feel like they probably didn't start calling those old noises warm or fuzzy until they started to develop an appreciation for them. Someone pops in a tape or whatever and is like "wow this sound is so shitty" but then his friend sits up from where he was lying on the floor and says "no man, that's 'warm.' I'm lovin it!"

not really. people were pretty universally happy when records came out. they sounded better than what was out at the time (which was wax cylinders, not saying much.) then tape came out. it did a thing, it sucked, it left. some people still liked it specifically for its shortcomings and managed to make successful things out of it, but as a format for playback, it blew. then CDs happened, and they're cool, and records are still around as well. it sounds better, otherwise it wouldn't have outlasted every other technology that came after it.

[alex]

oh my. I probably shouldn't even reply to this, since I'm short of time right now and will be offline for the best part of next week in a couple of hours, but my fingers are gettin' itchy upon reading Reese's last post. Explaining the success or persistence of particular technologies over others in terms of their intrinsic superiority is never sufficient, since it always depends on how we define success to begin with and what kind of expectations we have of a technology, none of which can be taken as self-evident. Where sound technologies are concerned, as much depends on how we approach the technology and indeed, how we listen to it (which kind of sound we pay attention to, what we block out - hearing, after all, is a pretty complex brain process) as on the intrinsic properties of the technology. "It just sounds better" is a pretty lousy explanation for that, since our very idea of what sounds "good" is shaped by cultural factors. The fact that people were "pretty universally happy" when records came out, as you say, is actually a good example - as far as I know, most new audio technologies (even the shitty wax cylinders you mention, yes) were greeted neither with a "that sounds lousy, it's all hissy and distorted!" nor with a "awww, isn't that distortion beautiful", but rather with enthusiasm about the accuracy of the sound reproduction. Those very same technologies don't sound all that accurate in their reproduction to us now, because we listen to them differently and have different standards. But taking any particular standard as self-evident reference point for saying "yeah, that technology sticked around because it just sounded better" is kinda pointless, because the standards aren't a natural given, they're culturally shaped.

It's a little too hot to be coherent right now, sorry. (You'd figure I'd do better than this, considering I just wrote an academic treatise of sorts on this very topic a couple of weeks ago, but, eh.) Perhaps I should just throw in a recommendation for this book instead.