Google Recordings/Apple Records

An interesting proposition here, by Edward James Bass on thenextweb.com that tech companies might buy up bits of the music biz or even set up as labels themselves.

In a way, it’s already happening, but without the investment in artists.  Perhaps they’re waiting for a successful model to appear which can then be sucked into their amoeba structure, (XL beware!) or perhaps the grand and evil plan is that, eventually, when all the artists have given up trying to make money from their recordings they will be able treat music in the same way they treat funny baby videos…  a bit like they’re doing right now.

Of course, the music won’t stop.  There will be a million copycat hobbyists for them to choose from (some of them adding music to the meals they prepare in the kitchens of their restaurants, along with pepper and cumen), plus a few thousand doomed and starving True Artists, still trying to push the boundaries in between searching the gutters for a crust.

Perhaps, if they are as wise as they seem to be, the tech companies might find a way to invest in the artists who provide the soundtracks to a billion web visits.  Could they fund academies?  Trust funds that provide bursaries (you need two references from a cool teacher)?  Buy up Mean Fiddler?  Or just become Apple Records - ‘bringing together the artists of today with the methods and media of tomorrow…’

75% Want a Record Deal

On the back of the Reverbnation survey of over 1,800 artists, 75% of whom would like to sign a record deal, it has to be asked: what’s happened to the DIY digital pop revolution?

What amazed me, in particular, about the survey was the record companies listed as Most Wanted: the majors…  Sony, Universal, Warner etc

Is it the innate stupidity of hundreds of music artists?  Or are they recognising the basic flaw in the DIY argument: to promote a group successfully you need money and resources beyond those possessed by most bands and soloists?

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Kimya Dawson - Adding Value

Here is a perfect example of what can happen when the principle of ‘adding value’ is taken up by an artist who understands the interweb perfectly.

Kimya Dawson, clearing her nasal passages

Think on, gurus.  Here is the future.

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Think For Yourself & Question Authority

I have found myself commenting (ranting?) on various posts on Music Think Tank a lot recently, normally versions of one theme, which can be summed up by a phrase borrowed from Timothy Leary, the psychedelic guru/grass, who nevertheless had a way with a catchphrase: ‘think for yourself and question authority’.

What bugs me are the posts that state or imply that there are routes to success available to any artist who follows certain rules.

Hardly any provide proof of any kind.

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Soul Tarmac

If you didn’t take a picture or make a video did you see it?  The other day I found myself walking past a house with windows open, a small choir practising inside, something vaguely modern.  My first thought was “I wish I’d brought my iPhone so I could record it and take a picture of the window through which the music came”.

I don’t imagine I had the same feelings at 16 about pop music as did someone born in 1900 and I don’t imagine young people feel the same about pop music as I did.  But.  There seems to be a movement towards admiration of craft and delivery that reflects the insistence of pop guru futurists that artists make sure they have a lot of interesting shit to show, as well as their fine faces and wonderful music.  That is, that we like the music, OK, but what sets artists apart is how and what they show about how they live and make their art.

And there are two strands appearing.  The first is the pure pop model that is as wet and spongey with its emotional and visual content as hard core porn.  Have a look at the Kate Perry Making Of… videos.  It’s not what she says or how she acts, it’s the actual tiredness in the eyes after a long shoot and the walking out of studio light into shadow.  You never used to see that.  The Monkeys did it in their incredible pop deconstruction film, Head, but who saw that?  The Beatles tried it but it always came off cute.  Both were scripted.  I don’t think Perry faked it, indeed, that would be directing and acting worthy of a Cassavetes film.  With the connivance of people like Perez Hilton the emotional pimples of superpop people are becoming as essential as the Max Factor that covers the physical ones up for the photo shoot.

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Future Now Pt1: The Folk Who Live On The Hill

As a result of a slightly intense email exchange with Andy ‘Hobbes’ Richardson, DJ and promoter of, amongst other nights, the consistently smart Limbo nights at Edinburgh’s Voodoo Rooms (together with partner Dave Cumings) I felt inspired to explore just how I really felt about the music business.  The exchange was triggered by a small review on my blog of a talk given, on the day of Malcolm Maclaren’s death by Gavin Blain, a Scot who faked an identity as an American rapper in order to scam a major label record deal and has recently released a book about his experiences.  My view was that he appeared to be ungrateful and unnecessarily harsh about the Sony employees he hoodwinked. 

This is what Andy thought, though: ‘perhaps McLaren’s death has coloured your interpretation of (the talk) but i see the death of the arch manipulator as heralding a new dawn, the beginning of a more genuine and authentic music industry with less cynicism and more integrity all round….i see Gavin Bain equally as a harbinger for this change.  his bitter-sweet experience emphasises the need for more authenticity and underlines the soulless vacuum offered by (more or less) anything else. ‘

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