Baseball Toaster was unplugged on February 4, 2009.
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...but I'm not. New Western Homes content, just as soon as I actually have time to watch some scripted television.
In the meantime, it's been an interesting few weeks for the music business, hasn't it? Madonna left her label to sign with a tour promoter, Radiohead left their label to sign with... nobody, and a lot of midlevel people in the "industry" are starting to feel like their jobs are in danger. If the established model of distribution for music were to completely fall apart, would artists suffer? I contend that they would not. Like many, I elected to pay quite a lot more than the price of a single CD for the download of Radiohead's In Rainbows last week. I doubt there are enough groups -- or really any other groups -- with the sort of colossal cred Radiohead has earned to make this business model the norm, but let me give you a smaller and perhaps more relevant example.
I recently got a turntable hooked back up in my apartment after years doing without one. Immediately I was reminded of the difference -- especially with an even halfway-decent hi-fi, vinyl records just sound better than CD's or mp3's -- they just do. There might be a physical reason for it or it might be more metaphysical, an article-of-faith sort of thing. So I've been really enjoying myself cruising record stores in Boulder, Denver, and Chicago trying to find copies of the best records of the last couple of years -- The Strokes' Room on Fire, Radiohead's Kid A, Wilco's Sky Blue Sky, the Decemberists' Picaresque -- that I have already listened to many times in digital formats and now wish to enjoy in pristine vinyl fidelity.
It may come as a surprise to some people that vinyl editions of brand new recordings are still made. They have, as a matter of fact, been persistently available for the sort of people who seek those things out through the entire cassette, CD, minidisc, and iTunes eras. Spoon's heavily Motown-themed Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, which came out this spring, really needs to be heard on an LP -- and it comes with a coupon to download the whole album online. Shake the double gatefold to the 180-gram Sky Blue Sky and a free copy of the CD falls right out on the floor.
The point is, true music snobs have ignored and will ignore the iPod in the same manner as they spurned the CD. And for people in the middle, like me, a renewed appreciation for the turntable leads to a much more ethical attitude towards acquiring new music. Will I still download stuff in big chunks? Yes, I will. I am too poor and too music-hungry not to do so. But when something I've downloaded and listened to hundreds of times -- like those Spoon and Wilco records -- really sticks in my mind as worthwhile I'll probably go and get the LP to get the record-nerd "complete experience." Meaning that rather than paying up front for a CD with a bunch of tracks I don't care for, I'm only paying for the albums that I know from experience are exceptional. This extends to buying concert tickets for bands I have come to admire from prolonged exposure to their recordings.
So bands that make the best records and put on a superior live experience will continue to make a living. Maybe fewer people will get disgustingly rich, but on the whole I think that's not such a bad thing. And no matter what happens, I still have my audiophile reissue of Big Star's Radio City and there's not much anyone can do to take that away from me, short of cutting off my electricity. And if they do that I'll get a hand-crank turntable.
Back in the day of no girlfriend/wife/kids and disposable income, I would buy 3-4 CDs per month. Three quarters of which wouldn't get airplay from me after a month. Then Napster came along and voila -- no more buying crappy CDs for one song. I'd still buy CDs, but mostly for established artists that I'm pretty sure I'll like at least 75% of the album. Fast forward to today, and I've got a definite rythym to my music purchases. Now, with the old Napster long gone and in the age of iPods, Torrents and downloadable discographies, I generally go by the rule of 10. I'll download 6-8 new albums per month and give each a listen or three. If I ever get to the point where I've listened to something ten times, that's when I'll actually go buy the CD. I buy the CD mostly for hard backup and physical artwork purposes, and of course to support the artist. I rarely actually listen to the disc, beyond that first clean iTunes rip. I buy roughly 20 full albums per year. I'll also buy some singles off iTunes from the Oneders.
With this in mind, I've come to like a number of newer bands, and purchased plenty of CDs that I never would have without downloading. So, it seems I'm basically with you when it comes to buying music. I only buy the best of the best.
I'm not sure if that helps the industry as a whole, though. Major labels would only serve the biggest acts, and eventually they will all break up/die/fall out of flavor. If the major label doesn't market music, who will? How would you know who the new Wilco is? (Not that I'm a fan) From a friend? How would he know who the new bands are? I tend to avoid MySpace, largely because its largely crap. Labels are good for a) finding new bands, and b) promoting new bands. Bigger bands on labels support the smaller bands on labels. Smaller bands, if they have the chops, become bigger bands. (or even if they don't have the chops) I don't know if there'd ever be another Radiohead again if there wasn't a giant marketing machine, and a band like Radiohead making mass quantities of money for a label, pushing the music. Getting music in the hands of reviewers, getting music on the air.
I personally would still find some music, via mp3 blogs and other friends that are hard-core music lovers. But the masses wouldn't find music, and I just have a hard time believing that anyone would ever become as popular as Radiohead again.
However, I have two obvious counter-examples to your contention about bands being unable to grow without label support. Phish and the Grateful Dead both became huge with little to no radio and mainstream press support. In both cases, major labels tried and failed to make money off of selling records by the bands (who made all their money off of touring) and eventually gave up and let the bands put out their records on their own.
Point being, if we take away the current mechanism by which most people are exposed to new music, the next tier down is word of mouth from early adopter types like you and I, and we have way better taste than the major labels, I suspect.
Yep. Maybe you were being a little sarcastic Mark, but the electrical engineer in me feels compelled to respond. The vinyl record has the entire recording on it. Anything digital (CD, MP3, etc) has been sampled, so even at a very high sampling rate (say 44 MHz), you still don't get everything. The vinyl will always sound better, because it has everything. The digital version may be clearer-sounding, but its missing a bit.
2 Maybe I'm naive about how this all works, but even if the labels weren't promoting music, couldn't radio stations still do it themselves? I mean, radio isn't dead, right? And IIRC, stations aren't supposed to get anything from labels in exchange for playing music anyway.
You guys probably have better taste than a lot of local disc jockeys, but I think good music would still get to the masses.
The examples you gave, Phish and Grateful Dead, are extreme counter examples in the hippie/jam band category and are probably irrelevant to the discussion. Both came to popularity in the pre-Mp3/short-attention-span era as well. (Though there was a massive amount of tape-sharing within the community.)
One modern band that probably does qualify is Arctic Monkeys. They've achieved a fair amount of success using file sharing and a massive web presence as their primary instigator.
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