• The number of people buying music online increased by 8 million people, for a total of 36 million, in 2008
• 13 million fewer buyers of music in the US last year
• Online social networks are playing an increasingly important role in shaping music listening. (duh)

Check it out if you feel like it…

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Song: Wasted Time by The Dead Letters

Listen, motherf*ckers, prepare to have your shit rocked. Oh damn, is that a quietly building loop? Fuck that is genius, IS THAT REVERSED? Hold on to your seathole, because that’s not weak-ass Chan Marshall, that’s f*cking Ashley Bullock, aka BullROCK. Listen to those lyrics! Thoughtful as a motherf*cker. 

OH SNAP! Is that a guitar/bass break? Yes, you pussy, that is. We don’t fuck around with weak ass shit, we go straight – BUILDING, SLOWLY BUILDING. I AM SO PUMPED RIGHT NOW! – to the ROCK OOOOH WA AH AH AH.

Now that you’ve been skullf*cked by this masterpiece, you best be snifflin. You’re right, that WAS the most beautiful thing you’ve ever heard in your life!

Tell your friends. If they can handle it.

The Greatest Song In The World

My comments:

What got my attention before I’d even listened to the song was the line: “Is that a guitar/bass break? Yes, you pussy, that is.” I just love how direct and antagonistic it’s trying to be, given how asburd the use of “p*ssy” here is in the context of someone’s reaction to a bridge in a song. 

The “marketing” of the song is probably the most interesting thing about it here. From the writer’s tone you’d think the song was this over-the-top melodrama that tries to destroy the listener. I was pretty surprised that it turned out to be a melancholic, introspective haze, because that’s pretty much the opposite of the review’s attitude. So that was disappointing.

The song is thoughtful and captures a mood of youthful indie rock revery, but I wouldn’t consider it for “greatest song in the world”, as the writer refers to it, because I don’t really think of it as a song, more of a state of mind or something. The words are not entirely intelligible and I couldn’t find lyrics on their website. That doesn’t bother me, really. Production a little too sparse on the build, meaning the orchestration wasn’t full enough to back the force it was striving for.

I like the vocals, makes me think of the film character Juno, but a kind of deteriorated version of her that got detentions and practiced harmless forms of vandalism. Or Mazzy Starr in high school, getting pissed at boys who can’t hear how beautiful her voice is because she won’t sing to them, and she just walks past them in the hallways in a dark-colored hoodie with a silver metallic zipper down the middle. 

The intro section is very Godspeed You Black Emperor, which I like too.

Anyway, thanks to the Dead Letters for their song. Best of luck!

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The question is: What happens to the music itself when the way to build a career shifts from recording songs that ordinary listeners want to buy to making music that marketers can use? That creates pressure, subtle but genuine, for music to recede: to embrace the element of vacancy that makes a good soundtrack so unobtrusive, to edit a lyric to be less specific or private, to leave blanks for the image or message the music now serves. Perhaps the song will still make that essential, head-turning first impression, but it won’t be as memorable or independent.

There are plenty of good points brought up over the tricky relationship between commerce and art. It’s a perennial problem that’s manifesting itself in new ways given the shifts in the music industry.

Licensing hasn’t changed how or why I write music, but I have never made any money from licensing.

It seems to me that anything that can be corrupted will be corrupted, but that’s not necessarily terrible. There will always be a new generation of uncorrupted artists, ready to throw themselves off the cliff. I am generally concerned, though, about the increased branding and marketing of everything in this life.

As we seek a perpetually higher standard of living, how can people make more money without increasing the amount of things they sell to other people?

What do you think? Check out the article.

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I have no idea what’s been going on with the “music industry” or music marketing lately. And I missed CMJ in NYC entirely. 

Good luck to everyone out there playing and singing and writing. I did score a beautiful electric piano for a fraction of its cost recently, so I have a new compositional tool. 

This site has been quiet for the past several weeks, as I’ve been busy launching a new ecommerce site for One Pearl. One Pearl sells beautiful pearl and semiprecious stone jewelry, and gives away most of their profits to fund organizations that benefit children. They do great work and I’m proud to be part of it. So put down your guitars momentarily and surf the site.

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There’s an article at Wired about this mis-sent email and the idiotic attempts by its author to have his good deeds de-publicized. Here’s one of his winning defenses of selling product placements in songs:

“We are just financially taking care of the people that should be taken care of…If an artist like Sheryl Crow has the same target audience as XZY brand, we feel it’s nothing but a strong and strategic way to pinpoint a market.”

I was thinking of starting a non-profit recently to “take care of” Sheryl Crow, but I’m glad a for-profit got to it first and is looking out for her. She seems to really be suffering.

That said, I also disagree with the Anti-Advertising people, who seem to advocate a disabling “integrity” that would shame every artist into giving away his last pieces of property and living under a tree in a public park:

“Unfortunately, it does seem that some truly independent artists actually DO need the money provided by a momentary advertising fix.”

So they’re saying that some people, even though they have no corporate sources of income, may actually need money to survive like the rest of us? Who could imagine?! 

Get off your high horse. And take a writing class: their mission statement does everything but lay out a mission, getting lost in the satisfaction of using words that obscure and make uninteresting any actual point they may have.

But that’s just me, a broke independent musician, bitter that Coca-Cola hasn’t called yet asking me to write a song about Diet Sprite.

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To subvert the subversion, I’ve decided to place this icon above my Google ads:

Maybe if they institute a pay-per-click program I can offset the loss of giving my music away for free.

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How To Design a Winning and Profitable Music Business.

I checked the guide out and wrote a review for him. Here’s what I had to say:

“Kavit Haria’s ebook outlines some essential business practices that musicians interested in building a career should consider. Instead of taking the ad hoc and uncoordinated approach, musicians should carefully consider their goals and the concrete steps to get them there. If you are in the process of turning music creation into a music business, you should check out Kavit’s summary of a music business framework and his analysis of the artist-fan relationship.”

Another aspect to the book that I thought was important is his distinction between opportunistic and strategic thinking. Most of us move forward without a clear plan, taking the opportunities that present themselves, but not moving towards a concrete goal. If you define your goals first and then work backwards, your actions should be much more effective.

I hear that.

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If you want to share your perspective on the music industry, your career, or any marketing strategies and tools, let me know…

brian@themusicsnob.com

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“You should write some songs with three chords and make a shitload of money. Sell out.”

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Today on the bus ride back to Manhattan I was digging up some old classics on the iPod, and spent some time admiring the brilliant counterpoint at the end of “Coma” from GNR’s Use Your Illusions I. Slash’s guitar line interacts beautifully with Axl’s vocal melody for the last couple of minutes of the song.

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