______ is the epicenter for _____ music. And it’s making a comeback. It was pushed down by the man, the major labels fighting for hits. But now with hits diminished, all the music pushed down to the bottom of the river is resurfacing. Running around the Memphis Marriott you’d think folk music rules the world.

Comment:

I agree with this idea if listeners are able to become more active in searching out music for themselves, or it the amount of music marketing aiming to box people in is reduced.

Everybody loves the geeks, they are the business titans of our time, but it is hardly a slam dunk to say they are well equipped to save the music business.

Check out the excerpt below and allow me to address two points from the excerpt.

1.  The paying of producers $100,000 per song.  I think Katy Perry is a hard working person, ambitious, and very cute and willing to show that.

Do the geeks really think she is overflowing with musical talent and does not require the talents and reputations of skilled proven producers to maker her records work in the marketplace?

The $100,000 number would appear high, but what I would guess is going on is that Ms. Perry and her management are not looking to pay points for producers’ work, points being a percentage of sales.

This is a mistake by geeks to think that $100k for a song is an unnecessary expense, it’s an essential part of the Katy Perry Formula.

1.  The issue of the payola/”special promotions”.  I promise to be polite on this issue, but the geeks are really showing their naivete here.

Where would Katy Perry be without the saturation marketing?  Working at the Gap, fellas.  The world was not waiting for and hoping for the genius of Katy Perry, she was foisted upon a somewhat malleable American public, and that shit is expensive.

I’m all for discussion of the music business, but it has to be a little more connected to reality than this article and the geeks need to have a deeper understanding of the music business than just a social music experience and an algorithmic music filter.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120214/02015317752.shtml

A few weeks back, the folks at Planet Money tried to break down the economics of Katy Perry’s massively successful album with its five hit singles. Specifically, they wanted to figure out how much money her label made from such a big success. What comes out is a step-by-step description of the massive inefficiencies of the major label recording system. There are things like paying producers $100,000 per song they produce on the album. Then there’s all the payola… er “special promotions” to get the songs played on radio so much.

@@ Anti-Gravity Bunny has a farewell to Parts and Labor over here.  I thought the 2006 record Mapmakers is an underground classic.  The first tune ‘Fractured Skies’ is ridiculous and folks should check it out.

@@ You can here the Guardian stream Bruce Springsteen’s new record one track at a time.  I would put up a link, but they’re gonna expire and it will make me look stupid, and I’m stupid enough already.

@@ Case in point an Exitmusic song over here at KEXP’s blog coming out overon Secretly Canadian in April.  Overwrought is not the same as passionate.

@@ You can listen to a ton of indie free legal indie music over here at Music Under Fire.

Lore: No Better.  Pretty awful.
Shy Around Strangers: Never Look Down.  Decent, not original.
The Electroscopes: Can’t Stand Still in the 70′s.  Recycled and not good.
Elias: Hands and Knees. Phasey indie disco.
Hopera: The Rising.  More indie 4 on the floor.  Oy, I’m done here.

@@ Quick Before It Melts has a post on Radio Radio over here and it’s all right.  Better than the dreck at Music Under Fire but not breaking any records (no pun intended).

@@ Check out this CNN video about Sub Pop band Washed Out over here.  The idea that musicians rise up out of nowhere based on their amazing musical talent is mostly a music business myth but it does sell records.  From what I hear from Washed Out’s music, there’s not a lot of genius involved in this music.

@@ You would never see this in America.  It’s a little gimmicky, but it is true that people all over the world make music.  Indie listeners, do you hear?

@@ There’s an interview with Fun over at Sunset in the Rearview over here.

You can hear the interview below:

Fun. Interview with Sunset in the Rearview by Sunset in the Rearview

A couple quick points:

1.  This has to be one of the most painful band interviews I’ve ever heard.  The Sunset rep is awful, she’s boring and the band isn’t much better.

2.  I’m not particularly obsessed with genre, but if these guys slot in the indie music slot then indie music is tired old stretched out whore of a genre.  These guys sound like a new age version of Styx for the 21st century.

3.  My prediction is that this is a cheesy band with a lot of money and connections behind them so real music fans are going to have to endure these guys for a while.

Not fun for me.

You get this picture of her (very nice):

And the record cover:

And you get an awful lot of prose about what a hard working and humble genius she is.  And that’s cool, but I will tell you that if she is a genius (and that’s not my call to make) I will say her music is the work of a boring genius.  Very Republican and not particularly passionate.

The way Ms. Spaulding is marketed makes perfect sense if your target consumer group are the horny, jazz brunch listeners out there who listen to jazz as a way to make themselves feel more sophisticated.  These folks, in my opinion, are not the people who are going to keep jazz going if it is to keep going.

In a healthier and better run jazz side of the music business world you would give some billing to the jazz music that could work and fit into the record collections of the millions of indie rock listeners out there.  The raucous, more out jazz can appeal to that set much better and some of those folks might actually get deeply into jazz and that, by the way, would help to keep the genre going.

I’m sure she’s a decent person, and I know musicians who studied with her at Berklee, and she has chops, but as far as I’m concerned she’s more of a marketing thing than a music thing.  I hope her next album proves me wrong, but I’m not holding my breath.

Yet digital music sales are not diminishing, as in 2011 digital music sales exceeded physical sales. And while total album sales (including physical and digital) grew by 1.3 per cent from 2010 to 2011.

Comment:

The music business is run by assholes — this is pretty much accepted as fact, and it has been confirmed by my own experiences in the music business.

There is here, however, more than a discussion about what the best way to deliver music to music listeners should be.

While cd prices remain outrageously high, digital music payouts for genres outside of mainstream pop can be mighty thin, and all the geeks and techno-preachers can’t deny that the music business has shrunk by half in the last decade plus and some of that is due to the net.

Music business asshole greedy?  Correct.
Technology assholes out of touch?  Correct.

That’s what I’m seeing.

@@ Band of Skulls: Fires.

They have a new album out this week that’s not on Spotify yet (or maybe never) but here’s the title track from the new disc with my observations.

Pocket review:  I like the sound of the song — great drum sound, big guitars, but the lyrics are kinda stupid and the video is retarded.  I would have to hear the rest of the record, but it looks like someone is putting a lot of money behind these guys and they’re using all the common marketing tools that end up ruining bands.

@@ Matthew Sweet: Oldendaze. Came out last year, I like this tune.

@@ Lennie Tristano: Intuition.

@@ Juke Joint Pimps: Eat for Me

@@ Left Lane Cruiser: Giving Tree.  Smart redneck music.

@@ Honey Ear Trio made a bunch of best of lists for 2011, and I’ve posted a video below.  I wish the raucous free jazz got the same amount of press as this Republican brunch jazz gets.  If you were an 18-year old would you want to traffic and support something with this vibe?  I know you yuppies out there are all over this like stink on a monkey.

@@ By the way, you can not fuck with Alice Coltrane.  She was badass (in some ways deeper than her husband John Coltrane), and when you hear this video, this is part of the reason we need a better sounding format than mp3.  It’s ass.

@@ Earth has a new record called Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light 2.  I dig Earth a lot.  I don’t know how you can hear their music and see how close it is to jazz, whether it’s composed or not.

My problems with music publicity are as follows:

1.  Much more concerned with a musician’s/band funding than musician’s band music.

2.  Corrupts any sort of word of mouth music filter that could exist and acts as a music filter that doesn’t work well.

3.  It’s all done somewhat deceptively creating the illusion that bands come out of nowhere and press that has been given to Band X or Band Y is deserved and based on their musical ability when it’s really just a question of money and lack of ethics.

@@ Gapplegate Music Review has a review up of the Neil Crowley Trio over here.  You can listen to them below.  This music is too soft for my taste, but a lot of folks lap this style up with a spoon so have at it.

@@ Quick Before It Melts is on and on about the band Yukon Blonde over here.  Uptempo, straightforward rock, the kind of stuff major labels used to traffic in.  Solid B.

@@ Panic Manual has a post up over here about He’s My Brother She’s My  Sister and you can hear a song down below which is a peek from their upcoming South by Southwest showcase.  I picked this track as their music publicist put their firm name in the soundcloud player.  Man, who’s the main attraction here: the PR firm or the band?  Toss a coin.  These guys are about as indie as that tube of toothpaste from Colgate.  The song is completely ordinary and this is why the music business is in the toilet.  Lowest common denominator, unexciting music.

@@  Wow, if you go to Invisible Oranges and click through to this page here you can then stream the new heavy metal masterpiece Sorrow and Extinction from Pallbearer on NPR!!!  When did NPR start getting down with the headbangers?  Will wonders never cease?  You can hear the whole thing over here at NPR but if you’re too lazy to click through you here’s a video:

Pocket review:  It’s proggy and heavy and slow, and I was not super into it.  It sounded very detached and analytical.  I am, by no means, a metal expert and I tend to like the Converge-y meltdown style.

@@ I like the singing on this Avett Brothers NPR concert.  I have not liked the recordings by them that I’ve heard but this video has more spunk to it.  If more bands went for this vibe the music business wouldn’t be in the toilet.  Lastly, I also had no clue NPR was so deep in the music slinging game.

@@ Built on a Weak Spot has a post up over here on Buildings.  It’s indie music that actually rocks – very Jesus Lizard like as they mention.  I dug the third tune ‘Invocation’.

@@ A Blog Supreme has a best of 2011 jazz list up over here.  I don’t like Ben Allison‘s music very much, but there he has a tune you can stream for each album he dig so you can stream right on the page and listen to jazz.  Here’s Captain Black Big Band — it’s a little straight for my taste which means most everybody will dig it.

@@  Soundroots.org has a track up over here from Indonesia by Sambasunda Quintet.   I could not embed the tune on the page, but you can stream it and here’s a video.  I liked it, I like world music, the only exception is that Chinese pop music makes me want to jump off a bridge.

@@ If you’ve never heard African salsa you should check out this clip and then buy some Orquestra Baobab‘s old records.  I don’t know for sure who the band is in this video, but it’s pretty wicked.

@@ Finally here’s 30 best records from 2011 from Eremite Records and there’s a lot of music on here, and not all of it jazz by any means.

30 EREMITE FAVORITES 2011 A-Z