Dimen Designs

Billy Bragg's "I Keep Faith"

Re-blogged via my Tumblr site, An Expat in London.

Billy Bragg's song, "I Keep Faith" featured as KCRW's Top Tune of the Day.

I need to thank my Chicago friend Patrick for re-introducing me to Billy Bragg.

He insisted that I listen to this song by Wilco (who I didn't know about this was in 2002/03, in between Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost is Born, before Wilco blew up) and Billy Bragg called "California Stars." Just starting to cement my musical knowledge, I was humbled at knowing Bragg or Wilco and of course fell in love with the song.

But Bragg's name resonated for some other reason but where? Then I remembered seeing his name attached to a quote from Hillman Curtis' amazing new media design book, MTIV: Making the Invisible Visible:

Our enemy really isn't capitalism, it's cynicism. That's one the things I learned from Woody (Guthrie)... Not to be cynical... That cynicism... It destroys you, it rots you away from the inside. So that sense of optimism and humanity... which 20 years ago I would have called socialism but now I'll call compassion... You know, that idea is still out there and alive and if you can plug into that and encourage that it makes it all worth while.

So I still don't really know Billy Bragg that well but give this song, "I Keep Faith" a listen and you'll better understand what makes him unique and noteworthy in a musical landscape dominated by the same manufactured crap sound.

Caribou Playing Thu. Night at Scala

  Caribou 
  Originally uploaded by Jeremy Farmer Photog.

My first concert in London, can't wait to go. I've heard of Caribou before and have been listening to them via The Hype Machine to get in the mood.

The sound reminds me a lot of The Album Leaf, who I saw play in D.C. a couple years ago. That was an amazing show so let's hope Caribou and London are of the same caliber.

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Now playing: Leo Laporte and the TWiTs - TWiT 142: I Like Big Pockets

New Death Cab for Cutie Album, Narrow Stairs

Been Listening to the new Death Cab for Cutie's upcoming album, "Narrow Stairs," and it's quite good. I was late to DCFC and only started listening to them after hearing Postal Service on the radio back in March 2003.

[I remember that day fondly, hearing "Recycled Air" for the first time on KRCC, because a huge snow storm pummeled the Front Range in Colorado that week and I had the week off by chance. I was still working Colorado Springs after graduation and went down to sports complex and built a little jump by the metal rail around the track to practice some boardslides.

It was an amazing session, just me out there doing my own thing and finally trying to slide a metal rail-- yes, it's hard. After the pain of not committing to the rail, I finally slide it a few times. Retreating to my car to warm up and drive back to my house, I heard "Recycled Air" and was amazed by the sound. At home, I downloaded as much postal Service as I could find.]

The new DCFC album comes out Tuesday but I've been listening to a few songs via The Hype Machine among other places. You've probably heard the first single, "I Will Possess My Heart"  but that's not my favorite.

"Your New Twin Sized Bed" is my favorite song of the album (reminds me a lot of Star's song, "My Favorite Book") and it's been on massive rotation over the last few days. If we weren't in the digital age, I would have surely burned through that section of the tape already from all of the playing.  Give it a listen and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

All Songs Considered Has Local D.C. Music Covered

  Photo credit to NPR and All Songs Considered.

The Washington Post's recent story on how to share music without getting sued was nice to see.

Bringing the joys of internet music to more people is always a positive step in the right direction. Second, anytime Last.fm gets coverage is helpful because it's a better way to discover and share music compared to traditional methods and the story itself helps reaffirm the continuing downfall of commercial radio.

As I've said before, commercial radio won't go extinct but in the next 2-3 years, it will be radically less important to musicians and music lovers than the internet.

With that in mind, however, I didn't see one of these old media channels, radio in fact, listed in the WaPo article. If you’re a fan of great music but missed some of the recent local shows, have no fear. NPR’s All Songs Considered has the live concerts available for streaming or podcast/iTunes & RSS download (if you're new to using RSS, see Mahalo's how-to page):

• Broken Social Scene
• Josh Ritter
  
• Travis
• Au Revoir Simone

Though I haven’t kept up with my concert attendance since the Stars show a month and a half ago now, I missed the Jen Lekman show because of a work trip but made the Sia show a couple weeks back and unexpectedly attended the Ryan Adams show too.

On the radar for the next few weeks (or see my Last.fm events for more details):

• Dinosaur Jr. is this Tuesday at Black Cat
• Cake and Brazilian Girls at D.A.R. Constitution Hall
• Rufus Wainwright at 9:30

With Christmas around the corner (I started buying presents already, a record I think), it's time to start checking the Rochester calendar for upcoming shows too. Actually, I'd love to see some great films over the break, like King Corn or Control. If I missed anything for upcoming shows or movies, let me know.
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Now playing: The Economist - This Week in The Economist, 22 November 2007

Visual Representation of My Music Listening Habits

Was a busy week, including work trip to Chicago but got to hang out with Patrick, Justin, and Pedro. Had a great time catching up over a good meal at the recently opened restaurant A Mano but as Pedro said, anytime the bartender has to waste three whiskeys because she fumbled the order you know there's trouble. I'll chalk it up to opening week jitters but back to the business at hand...

Thanks to Fred for first exploring this topic (of visually representing your musical tastes based on frequency and date) a few weeks back and for his recent post about LastGraph, an application that visually graphs your music listening habits (via Last.fm's API) in an informative and cool design. I believe the original concept for this came from Lee Byron at Carnegie Mellon :

(or the high quality PDF link)

I posted about combining LivePlasma's visualiziation tool and Last.fm's music listening data back in late 2005 after seeing LivePlasma's app on C|Net's websites as an alternative to tag clouds that could show related articles and keywords's data can be displayed in visually appealing, data-rich way, now it's time to combine this analysis with variables like:

• release of artists' new albums
• concerts you attended
• personal and work events
• web and music searching

I admit that there's a lot of personal, potentially private information intertwined with this next level of analysis but I'm not suggesting that the results be on your blog and indexed by Google unless you those details to be publically available. What's important is the ability to know how your music listening habits are influenced by events in your life, for your own personal curiosity of course and also for understanding how society at large discovers and listens to music based on moods and other factors.

You want to save the music industry, get to this next level of analysis, plotting the Last.fm graph above with life events and you'll have quite valuable knowledge on how to succeed in the digital age.

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Now playing: Finley Quaye And William Orbit - Layo & BushWacka Missing You M

Stars Tonight @ 930

  Stars  _MG_7669.jpg 
  Originally uploaded by svetlana80.

Stars played an amazing show tonight at 9:30. They were extremely energetic and you could tell by the back and forth between the lead singers (Torquil Campbell talks about it in this The Onion A.V. Club interview) that they really love doing this. Passion is hard to fake and it brings out the best in everyone and tonight was an amazing show.

It was good pop music, with a good mix of slow and fast songs, and it gives you reason to believe that good music, despite most of the crap on the radio and on TV, is still being made-- it's just that you may have to go to Canada (or Montreal specifically) to hear it.

The highlight for me was 'My Favourite Book,' which I've blogged or Twittered about before. In fact, I would have bought the ticket just to hear them play that one song.

NPR recorded the show tonight so make sure to check their website now in a couple weeks for the show.

UPDATE (10/21/07): Wrote the post last night on my mobile so added, photo, links, and formatting. I also added the quote below (from that same Onion interview) because it sums up what good music should accomplish (emphasis added):

The message is always the same from us: We want you to forget about this band. We want you to remember the songs and remember your own life, and remember your own potential for beauty. We don't care if you know who we are, we don't care if you think we're cool, and we don't care if you even own our records. We just want to, for a moment, make you aware that four chords and some beats can alter your perception of life and can make you think that life is a very strange, very beautiful thing, and that your life is somehow special. That'll always be the goal with this band. We don't have any solutions. We're not very powerful, exciting, unusual people. We're just trying to make powerful, unusual, exciting music, and make people feel that that music is a part of their lives. That's all we really care about.

The Radiohead Effect: Do We Still Need Record Labels?

fu
Originally uploaded by cherbert.

Ars Technica jumps on the recent tech meme regarding Radiohead's decision to release their new album under a variable pricing model (pay how much you value the music) and the underlying question surrounding that decision: do bands still need record labels?

The Ars Technica article says not so fast, Radiohead hasn't abandoned (perhaps too strong a term to use for now) their record label completely. This nuance has been lost in the cacophony over the debate on whether record labels are now officially dead (or whether they have at least reached a tipping point to their extinction).

I agree with this main premise. It's too simple to say that record labels are dead and I don't think they will ever die off completely but disagree with the reasons that they use to support that position (emphasis added):

Not every ardent music fan has a broadband connection, and most audiophiles aren't  enamored of compressed MP3 files. Also, the vast majority of what we hear on commercial radio stations is heavily influenced by the labels, which means that bands like Nine Inch Nails that have chosen to eschew traditional CD releases will have a more difficult time getting their music on the airwaves.

Let's break that section into two basic issues or problems:

1. While true that not everyone has broadband connections, mp3 quality is good enough for probably all but 95% of the public. If you really are an ardent fan, you'll actually purchase the CD or (more likely) the vinyl of the album.
2. True again. Unfortunately commercial radio is heavily influenced (or straight out controlled and corrupted via payola) by the record companies but is in this digital age, who listens to the radio anymore? This assumes that the public does want to listen to the radio to get new music but I think that's incorrect.

Radio listener numbers are plummeting precisely because they play the bubble gum, lowest common denominator crap music that the record labels are trying to push down our throats. If the labels want to further strangle and kill radio as they are doing so successfully now, then artists and bands should get as far away from the radio as possible.

Commercial radio was about pleasing the masses with the most average of music (see Benkler's Wealth of Networks) but now the internet allows bands to reach niche, extremely passionate fan bases without having to play by the old corrupt rules of commercial radio (payola schemes).

But until newer artists are able to attain the same degree of exposure and popularity without the help of the recording companies as they are with their assistance, there is still a significant role for the labels to play.

This is probably true but only temporarily. The internet is quickly becoming the medium of choice for music discovery among techies and hardcore music fans. It's only a matter of time (<5 years) before the general public will join the early adopters and move in the direction away from the radio and towards the internet.

At that point in the near future, marketing and promotion will be the record labels' only bread and butter value proposition that hasn't been destroyed by the internet. So record labels won't die off but they're going to be completely different kinds of businesses (along with their value propositions) as soon as they face up to the music (sorry, bad pun) and stop wasting their time suing their customers for downloading music.

Minus The Bear Tonight at Black Cat

sasquatch day 2 095 minus the bear
Originally uploaded by chona kasinger.

Looking forward to the Minus The Bear show tonight and thanks to a Buffalo friend who mentioned them.

October is a busy month for music. Here's my list of recent and upcoming shows, either events I'm attending or ones recommended to me thanks to Last.fm.

I first song I heard was 'Pachuca Sunrise', which I think was their single, give it a listen:
Minus the Bear – Pachuca Sunrise

But I prefer the song 'Throwing Shapes', which I'm embarrassed to admit that I heard during some random MTV pre-show ad.

Quit Your Day Job: How Indie Artists Make It

  Quit your day job 
  Originally uploaded by darwinsignlanguage.

I'm catching up on my weekend reading and writing before the Beer Scavenger Hunt of 2007 starts later today in Capital Hill (more on that later). I was quite excited to see an email announcing the new Hype Machine beta so I visited Stereogum (a legend in the mp3 blog world) because it's the number #1 referenced blog on Hype Machine.

I used to read Stereogum much more religiously before the sites like Hype Machine, Last.fm, and (most recently) Anywhere.fm took over my attention. Stereogum is great because it posts new music(with permission) from both emerging and established artists before other places get it, highlights these emerging artists with interviews and profiles, and publicizes cool links like this, Arcade Fire's new beonlineb.com site.

In my The Hard Road to Music Success post I referenced Stereogum as a popular music blog yet the Washington City Paper made the comparison that the website was small compared to the number of listeners a radio station could draw in during that medium's heyday.

I argued the problem with comparing website visits to radio listeners but more importantly, I wanted this post about Hotspur to underscore that despite the tech blogosphere's constant tirades against the music industry and specifically record labels, I don't think these discussions happen at the artist level. Usually, these discussions are at the macro level (record labels are toast and artists need to do it themselves), which is an engaging conversation but does it actually help a struggling band understand what they should be doing in this new media landscape to be successful?

As I've referenced before, I think Bob Lefsetz gets at the artists level more than most, stressing in no uncertain words that you'll never even have a chance at being successful unless you're doing it for the pure, unadulterated love of the music. Still, I don't think that up and coming bands know exactly what they should be doing in the new music industry: is it all about MySpace or all about selling self-produced albums via CDBaby or all about touring and playing relentlessly?

I'm not suggesting that ever was a specific plan to music success in the past (do A, B, and C and you're guaranteed to go platinum) but the music landscape and music industry is so different now that the number of paths to take are almost overwhelming. That's where the blogosphere could help: what should artist be doing, how should they be spending their time, etc.

A website or blog dedicated to artists sharing their thoughts, war stories, fears, and successes in trying to make it the music industry-- does such a site exist? If not, there should be one.

Well Sterogum's Quit Your Day Job is the closest thing I stumbled upon so far.It's a weekly post on artists trying to make it and it should be required reading for any band out there who is trying to figure out how to make music they love while still paying the bills.

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Now playing: KCRW Music - KCRW Music
via FoxyTunes    

Snarky Post of the Week (DRM Doesn't Rock)

  Light 
  Originally uploaded by patcy86.

It's been some time since the last Snarky Post of the Week installment but there's been enough good material lately (Apple's scare tactics surrounding iPhone hacks is a perfect case in point) that it's coming back for now.

Ignoring the iPhone and Facebook and Social Graph hoopla but continuing with the music-themed posts from this week, this headline caught my eye. A great example of dinosaurs trying to show how with it they are, when in reality, as Umair would say, it's an example of strategy decay:

"MTV, Real, and Wal-Mart Shake Up Digital Music" (PC World)

Thanks for the eye-catching headline; my question is what's worse, writing that headline to grab people's attention or writing it because you think it accurately captures what MTV, Real and Wal-Mart are trying to do?

Nothing could be further from the truth, having those three companies and their brands even mentioned as "shaking" things up in the area of digital music. It's almost laughable if it weren't so sad. And if you're new to the DRM discussion, you have some catching up to do but at least start with my last Snarky Post of the Week on why DRM does rock.

Let's not just complain without explaining why. The NYT Magazine story on Rick Rubin taking over at Columbia Records stirred up the music industry (see Bob Lefsetz) because Rubin suggested that music subscription was a possible answer to the industry's woes. As the PC World story says,

MTV and Real Networks announced in August that they would create a new music service based on Real's Rhapsody service and MTV's music content and packaging. Verizon will deliver portions of the service through its V Cast music offering.

Hmm, MTV as the arbiter of music that we want to listen to, not the partner or brand I'd chose to help with "content and packaging." MTV is old and done. We can all agree that MTV was once counter-culture and the barometer of cool but they sold out to advertising and cheap content (e.g. reality shows or user-generated content for your Web2.0 fans. MTV doesn't even play music anymore (last time I saw any music videos, and ones worth mentioning, were Feist and Ben Lee videos on VH1 late night last week). You know when Justin Timberlake is telling you to play more music that you've really lost it.

  sunset_day7_dad 
  Originally uploaded by cherbert.

Second, don't get me or anyone else started on Verizon. I have a general distaste for all cable and telco companies because they've been ripping off consumers and fighting innovation in their respective industries for so long that I don't have much respect for them. Again, it's almost funny to see their business models withering away thanks to the internet (go Google phone, please reduce the telco carriers to a commodity, transferring bits and not locking us into their devices anymore) but I can't laugh because they've been screwing consumers for so long.

And who uses V-Cast? Or put another way, how was the service slipped into the tiny print of the bills for those 10 unsuspecting people in the world that have this service (and don't even know that they're paying for it)?

Third, while there are some fans of Real's Rhapsody service (Fred is one among them), it hasn't taken off with people. They've had the service for some time but most people my age (20-30 range) probably don't know about it and prefer to still buy the music (CDs to rip themselves or via iTunes-- I told you my stance earlier this week.

The better question about subscription models, as Bob points out, is that "We need to define terms. Is subscription RENTAL or GETTING A STEADY CHECK FROM EVERY CUSTOMER EVERY MONTH?"

The market so far has not shown an appetite for the former. The latter is something that most consumers would be okay with if it means having access to all the music we want, whenever, wherever, and for whatever platform we want (home PC, work PC, laptop, mp3 player, phone, PDA, etc.). Stories about new music services demonstrate that the music industry is experimenting, and that's good, but they've had a lot of time to experiment and so far all results have been anti-consumer (DRM, Sony rootkit CDs, suing their customers, etc.).

We can hope that they figure out and survive or look forward to the new guard changing the entire industry and say goodbye to the traditional music industry as we know it. Rubin sums it up well.

"I have great confidence that we will have the best record company in the industry, but the reality is, in today's world, we might have the best dinosaur. Until a new model is agreed upon and rolling, we can be the best at the existing paradigm, but until the paradigm shifts, it's going to be a declining business. This model is done."

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Now playing: Doves - Walk In Fire
via FoxyTunes