Sean In Tumblr

“…trouble is now, no model’s being provided by the writers of possible ways of thinking and writing about pop - just an endlessly banal slew of platitudes, dying metaphors, meaning approaching absolute zero. Comes from talking down to the readership, the seeping middle-class assumption that any group as wide as a ‘readership’ needs things dumbing down, simplifying to the point of irrelevance. Where is the writing that speaks across to the readership, across the table, across the room, across the tracks and divisions to illuminate new ideas? Spiked, knocked out, or worse - not even thought of anymore. Reason? Because the WRONG FKN PEOPLE want to be music journalists, beavering hustlers and networkers, passionate ambassadors for their own needy inclusion in da biz, people so damn obsessed with getting their foot in the door they haven’t figured out if they have anything more than fuck-all to say, and couldn’t care less how revoltingly commonplace is the way they express that fuck-all. Style-less automatons of triteness and humbug and horseshit that criminally WASTE your time, and don’t even give you a laff in doing so.” — Neil Kulkarni via F.U.N.K: A New List From The NME, and some thoughts about pop-hackery.

May 08

May 03

You, Me, Technology, Music Discovery, The Future of Criticism and Everyone We Know

I think the ease of access has really muddled things. Some days I think it’s great that people don’t have to deal with issues of distribution to be heard, and that fans can easily click play and flick through huge amounts of music, without risking their dosh. However, for musicians and music overall there feels - to me at least - like there’s a lot of ‘that’ll do’ and if everyone thinks what they’re doing is good enough, and it gets a polite (read: positive) reaction, then it must be good enough, so why bother becoming a virtuoso or learning song craft or yuhknow, doing something that’s truly exceptional? By the time some acts realise this, their so-called ‘moment’ is deemed to have passed.

People talk about the upside of The Long Tail but I don’t truly believe unlimited choice is a great thing for music as a whole… There are now thousands/millions of acts selling a few tracks a week, which is great news for iTunes and start-ups taking a small cut off of all of these sales, but terrible news for those who want to commit to music full-time or even part-time, as all the revenues are diluted. Sometimes it feels as if every CDR or mp3 sold by an ‘unsigned band’ is a lost sale for Coldplay or Gaga or [insert mainstream act].

There’s a great book called Cult of the Amateur by Andrew Keen, which deals with a lot of these contradictions, which is well worth digging out.

> In your opinion, has this democratisation of music led to artistic endeavour being undermined?

I think it’s healthy to look at this moment of time within the grand scheme of music history. If you go back to before the 50s, which really isn’t that long ago really, things seem completely different. Sure we’ve had our heads spun into thinking music is on a downward trajectory since Fleetwood Mac, Michael Jackson and Springsteen flew around in private jets, but that’s not how things were decades before then and it’s not how things are for the vast majority now. Certain success stories like Adele paper over a huge issue, that’s impossible to comprehend without those success stories. It’s an issue of millions of people who once curiously bought a few albums a month, now flicking around the web all day. And also those the industry relied upon, who bought 2-5 CDs a year, now maybe only buy a few new mp3s, but are listening to music for free, and feeling like they’ve invested in their love of music by buying devices and headphones and festival tickets (where a huge chunk of the bill is only getting paid £50-400, which barely covers most acts costs of playing).

Then again, no-one really thought we’d have a ‘Thriller’ mass moment of millions watching and debating the same music video ever again but Gaga has clearly proven that wrong. I’ve not really studied any of the issues enough to get a handle on it all, but it just feels like we’ve gone back in time, to an era when there were fewer record shops and only a few global megastars, and maybe some acts doing it as a full-time job, maybe even a career, so perhaps the excesses and scale of the industry was just a blip, and a moment in time, and technology isn’t really to be “blamed”. I’m fascinated by how some acts are diversifying into boutique goods which vaguely compliment what they do (coffees and real ales seem to be the current popular choice, even for Hanson!)

> In what ways do you feel music criticism has changed since the shift from traditional media?

I swing back and forth on how I feel about this as the months go by. I’ve never been totally convinced that traditional media was ever as important as we believed it once was. Obviously without being able to quantify the impact of any journalism we’ll never truly be able to compare then and now (and the fact that people do try to quantify things now, especially with radio looking at YouTube playcounts, then we’re all a bit screwed!). However, if you look at the Metacritic, AnyDecentMusic and AlbumoftheYear year-end lists, which aggregate critical love, you’ll see very few big sellers. Similarly, the annual comparison of Pitchfork’s albums of the year and those records sales, makes for fascinating - if a bit depressing - reading.

Obviously critics pre-Napster (or moreso all the current streaming services) had the benefit of people reading without any ability to listen, so readers would build up an anticipation and perhaps an understanding, before buying and listening. Now that this great divide is no longer there, and the world of consumer-guide journalism is seemingly at an end, the place for criticism is sort of unclear. On the one hand, our time has become a huge commodity, and for anyone who just wants to hit play on some things and find something they might love (or least get something out of), the role of a critic is still important. As cogs that drive bigger cogs, critics will always have a role, even if it’s further down the food chance of importance than it once was - which could be truly liberating for the artform!

Many people now seem to read reviews as a companion to a record they like, to see if their understanding of the record is the same as someone else’s (who in theory is somewhat more informed about music), or to garner a new perspective on what they’re listening to. I still think people have journalists and critics they enjoy reading, and some they trust to thrust a great record into their world, and I can’t see that ever going away completely.

Whether anyone needs reviews or criticism is another matter, and a great source of concern, as well as a fascinating challenge to think how technology can evolve the role of the critic and the editor, to help music fans know what’s going on, and to help the world discover records that a generic algorithm might never highlight (this is what I’d love the DiS Spotify app to do, if we ever have enough money to make one).

One positive about now versus then, is that if you do want some truly in-depth analysis of a record, you’re only a google search away from a whole heap of opinions. The future could be far more longform than the past, if some of the stats coming out of the Economist and Atlantic are anything to go by, and I can imagine that there will always be a desire for some music fans to dive deeper. I mean, wouldn’t it be brilliant if there was a music mag that was more like The New Statesman? And where is the Charlie Brooker of popular music? Or the Richard Meltzer of 2012? (If you’re them, please do get in touch!)

> If you agree with the idea that “cool” has changed from ‘what’s being talked about’ to ‘what no one’s ever heard of’ … How do you feel this plays out for already established artists?

I think this idea is right at the heart of “second album syndrome” - whereby a new band is no longer shiny and new if they’ve been around a while. The ever more established an artist becomes, the harder it is for them to get much coverage, unless they previously sold millions or have some radical shift in style or come up with some gimmick for which the media can hang a feature around. I’ve always been tempted to do a study of the percentage of media coverage and airtime given over to acts who haven’t released an album, and looking at the percent who then go on to release a second or third album, which sells a notable number of copies (like, over 1000), and to compare that with the number of acts who sell 10k-50k albums, and how little coverage and support they get from the media.

It is sad that with the current state of affairs, whereby newness is often prioritised over quality, that few acts are managing to do much more than put a foot on a wobbly ladder. The chance of becoming a festival headliner of the future is diminished by the churn and shear volume of competition, and also by all those ‘classic band’ reformations sucking up the oxygen. I mean, is it really true that we haven’t had band capable of headlining a festival since Arctic Monkeys? Why is it that, say, White Lies get far more radio-play than, let’s say the National? How come Panic at the Disco, My Chemical Romance and Paramore, who have huge fanbases are conveniently ignored in all this “guitar music is dead” ballcrap that has wasted valuable media space for the past three years?

> The following is a quote from David Weinberger from his book ‘Everything is Miscellaneous’:
>
> “(…)At Apple Computer’s iTunes music store, it’s already happened. For decades we’ve been buying albums. We thought it was for artistic reasons, but it was really because the economics of the physical world required it: Bundling songs into long-playing lowered the production, marketing, and distribution costs because there were fewer records to make, ship, shelve, catagorize, alphabetize, and inventory. As soon as music went digital, we learned that the natural unit of music was the track.”
>
> Do you agree?

For pop music, maybe. If a song is just marketing for a sub-par album of half-arsed co-writes and tuneless filler, then yeah that world is quite screwed. Then again, why hasn’t the Now compilation album series become extinct? I mean, I’ve heard that Kitsune do very well with compilation albums of tracks you can find for free on blogs. Plus Best ofs were always bigger than albums for a certain sort of act anyway. The album is a very particular format and possibly even a style of music, I mean, I don’t get why someone like Cheryl Cole makes an album, when she could just release singles, and then do a compilation of them each Christmas - yet the labels probably only focus on albums because media is still very much an album world, with release dates and impact dates, geared around a coalescence of marketing and praise/reaction. When you zoom out from it, it all seems quite fickle and archaic much of the time, with no real sense of why things are as they are - especially when you hear stories about journalists rushing out 2/5 reviews, of albums they later realise are their album of the year or vice versa, whilst other releases get no coverage, just because they chose a busy week to release their record, whereas the week after they would have been a shoe-in for album of the week in most publications….

Going back to your question… For the pinnacle of the mainstream and the people who once bought 3 CDs a year, this we’re-all-doomed scenario is true. Sadly it was these consumers and these acts with big, but somewhat short-term “hit” singles that sold a lot of albums driving money into the major labels. It was then this dosh that was re-invested in outbidding labels and paying huge sums for the likes of Hope of the States and The Cooper Temple Clause, in the hope of producing the next arena-sized Radiohead, Coldplay, Muse, etc. It was these same labels that walked out of Kaiser Chiefs and Bat for Lashes gigs after a few songs to simply chat shit at the bar, when I was starting out with my label, and then went on to sign them 8months later for considerable sums, and these are just two examples that I have first-hand experience of, there are so many more stories…

This we’re-all-doomed statement is not true for the sort of music I love and DiS readers love, and I think there is an increasing push toward albums as a rounded concepts, which hang together thematically or dramatically or just as an hour of your life in the company of someone truly talented. Sadly a lot of the buzzy new acts tend to trade in albums of a couple of good tracks and the tunes they wrote to write those two great songs - it’s almost as if they’re padding things out to show their workings. I think these disappointing “bodies of work” could be quite damaging to people who rarely take a risk with their money and time on brand new things but that isn’t really what you were asking….

> If not, what do you feel has led to the “death of the album”?

The album, much like the longform feature, will long outlive the track and the tittle-tattle tweets. I think in 30 years or more we will look back at now and remember great albums from the likes of Burial and Bon Iver, far more than we’ll remember the Rebecca Black’s and bad euro-disco Black Eyed Peas singles. Not that the novelty single will ever die, it’s just that we’ll see a YouTube chart rather than an iTunes chart before too long.

I mean, there are messageboard threads on DiS which get 400+ replies in a day, and then never get looked at again, and then there are lengthy features on Bjork and that snarky review I did of Jessie J, which still get 400 hits a week, many months after they were published.

> Has “buzz” by a good PR company, in many ways, overtaken the importance of the quality of music?

Not sure PRs really lead the buzz. They may shepherd it a bit and they might strategically feed the mob but it doesn’t really come from them. A lot of buzz is just a surging snowball of positivity and is quite reactive. Some of it is self-reflecting as we live in an era of self-presentation, and much of it is little more than instant “ooh this is quite good” sharing, following a track hitting Pitchfork or a mass of inboxes from a trusted PR/label. If you look at Grimes on 4AD and Lana Del Rey, and analyse the spread of reaction, it’s often radiating from tracks appearing on YouTube (then quickly onto Twitter and Facebook) or somewhere like HipsterRunoff, and the press releases follow in my inbox days later. If PRs were that good and important, all 10-15 of the acts that Gaga or Lana’s PR work, would be household names, but as it is, they often represent great things that get a few posts, but nothing on the scale of those major acts, and it’s through no fault of their own.

> There is a great recent example of online media ‘breaking’ an artist in an unconventional way and that is The Weeknd with their review on Pitchfork and their then rise to fame. This shows that the old age established business model can be altered quite drastically and an artist can still see fame, but do you think that since there is such buzz around artists at the beginning, it can be sustained throughout their career? (Feel free to use The Weeknd example or any other)

It’ll be interesting to see what happens for them. I think they’ll be around and respected far longer than Odd Future, for instance, as what they’re creating seems far less like sensationalist trolling that pokes and chases the contours of now. I guess it’s a style over substance thing, but maybe this isn’t the best example… I think there is very much a boom and bust for buzzbands, and you can soar too high, too fast (like icarus). Part of this is because once you become relevant, a certain sort of critic is forced to have an opinion of your music, and they tend to veer one way or the other, rather than being 6/10ish. There’s certainly a weird reaction to hype and buzz, and it can obviously be great for bands being booked for festivals for decent fees and/or getting syncs and lots of love, but the way in which certain people feel that there’s enough support and awareness for an act, and that they’re not longer needed, is sort of strange. I’ve never felt that the scale of an act and my love and support for them should differ. It seems like a new generation are operating on different terms, and I’m not sure any of them are thinking they’ll still be listening to any of the music they love and 10/10 now in ten, let alone thirty years time. Nor do they look at now with a 50 or 500 years of music sort of context. Not that I can see I/we are any better…

It’s hard to truly know. We reviewed 852 albums last year (http://drownedinsound.com/news/4144278-dis-in-2011—stats-most-read-top-threads-and-editors-picks), of which, we tended to avoid the utter dross… I mean, I get sent on average 20 albums and 30+ singles every day, so some of it might not be rubbish, but that is a whole other issue… Most of what merited appraisal was stuff worthy (for want of a better word) of people’s time. I’d love to think there are thousands of people going out and checking out everything we give above a six but I know this isn’t the case (and we don’t really bother with things that aren’t great). We have a dedicated hardcore who read everything, and then another ten thousand people who check out everything in our recommended section, and then the rest of our traffic (30k visitors a day, which, might not sound like many until you consider it is like two arena crowds, and if they all tried to pile into my office at the same time, I’d be in trouble…) is folks who drift in from Google and social networks. Obviously the scale of a band is relevant-ish to the traffic of a review, so a 6/10 of a Springsteen or Rihanna record is still going to garner more traffic than some band still playing in their hometown to ten men and a dog. I’m not sure therefore, that people like us, as one of many websites (including sub-sections of New York Times, Guardian, etc) are having the same impact as certain publications, radio djs and individuals once did. The combined dilution (for want a better double-negative) however probably adds up to far more median influence than has ever happened previously. Especially when one big recommendations hits the web’s echo chamber. But at the same time, widespread critical praise can often not add up to big sales, so…

The only way we really make an impact on people is by repeatedly mentioning an exceptional record (usually because I’m so excited by it I can’t help myself). The Antlers album is a great example of an album we went overboard for, both in terms of multiple features (they were on nearly all of my 2011 month in Spotify playlists) and my repeated tweets, but it was our community, posting threads about the record ever few weeks, which got people to listen and re-listen if they’d written it off after a cursory listen. Add to that various other sites and publications giving them similar praise and it seemed to add up (although oddly it didn’t seem to lead to any radio play in the UK and Pitchfork forgot to put Burst Apart in their albums of the year list)

That said, there are definitely individuals whose taste I know and trust that will lead me to quickly check something out and I’m a sucker for an overblown description, but more often than not I use a vague triangulation of three or more people I trust talking something up to set aside time to dedicate my attention to a record. This can be DiS writers, DiS boarders, bloggers or even bands, and I suspect I’m not alone in this ‘lotsa people seem to like it, I’ll give it a go’ approach. I’m not sure any one individual or publication has sway over people any more, but I might be wrong in believing this.

I do wonder whether a lot of people would prefer the Metacritic aggregate overview of a record, rather than the individual tasked with reviewing it for one publication approach. We do get a decent amount of traffic from Metacritic and sites like it every so often. This is also why year-end lists have become such a big deal for people, reducing a years worth of listening down to a quick and easy digest of what’s good. And again, an element of triangulation seems to come into play.

I dunno, I can see the logic of this statement, and it’s certainly true that some music fans now seem to say “I like a bit of everything” but there’s definitely still niches and stars that people and publications dedicate themselves to (i.e. Gaga and Pete Doherty).

As I was saying, we like to repeatedly mention acts to underscore how much we like them, and hopefully this provides an increasing depth of knowledge for people. There’s so much music around and I guess there are people who know a bit about everything, but you’ll find the most influential people are the ones who are masters of their sphere of taste. I know it totally baffles people that I love Elliott Smith and recommend things like Tim Hecker and then rave about Paramore, and I know if I was just into “one thing” then I’d probably be far more a reliable guide for people who are into one sort of “thing”.

Additionally… Over the past decade, publications have become less and less important as way artists communicate with their audience (and reach a new audience). Social media has ramped up the one-to-many dynamic for acts to fans, and gives a one-to-one artist-to-fan sense of connection that a magazine interview would never allow (this direct-to-fan spread of information is kinda killed the point of “news” for sites like ours). Whether this is a good thing for the mystique and magic of an act remains to be seen, and obviously the depth of these interactions is not going to be as great as reading Lester Bangs vs Lou Reed or picking up a book about Tom Waits.

Obviously it isn’t a great thing for music if most fans have a fairly shallow relationship with a lot of people. I mean, just compare Gotye’s YouTube views with his “fans” on Facebook and Twitter. The metrics of that are baffling, but then there’s the 1000 true fans concept, of being able to make £50 a year from a 1000 people in terms of a ticket, merch item (and maybe an album), whereas it’s far harder to get the scale to obtain £1 from 50,000 people. The dynamics of it all are baffling, and I’m not sure any of it is good for musicians or music as a whole ecosystem…everytime someone buys an mp3 by a band on Bandcamp is a lost album sale for Coldplay, which is a bit less a label can invest in a band, etc, etc…

There are so many things. The churn of the new, and the surface relationships mentioned above is obviously a huge problem (hence that “new music is more damaging to music than piracy” comment I made a few weeks ago).

One of my personal major bugbears is the lack of investment available for artists, and the short-term knee-jerk reactions we make. Like, bands used to have labels funding tour support, and they’d get good live, and then be presented to the public and the media. Now they’re slogging it out at showcase conferences and pick’n’mix festivals, with no soundcheck, and no real assured sense of what they’re doing. They don’t have lights (which make a considerable difference) nor their own sound guy, and that’s the opportunity to impress potential fans and woo labels, who basically want to see the finished product. And if they do have a ‘hit’ they’re thrown on ever TV show and big stage, with no sense that anyone cares if they’re great live. Lana Del Rey is an obvious example of this, but there are so many more, and it just doesn’t seem like acts are allowed to grow and develop, but nor does it seem that people are particularly appalled when someone isn’t great live…but if the live biz is what’s meant to be paying acts bills, there’s gonna be a point when investment in ‘shows’ becomes incredibly important for the industry at large.

Apr 29

Week in Words
A digest of things I enjoyed reading this week… what else should I have read? Share your picks of the week here.

Mourning MySpace by A-Trak

Take my friend Kavinsky for example, of Drive soundtrack fame. I can assure you that in 2007 he was already MySpace-famous for having the coolest looking page on there, complete with a tri-dimensional Tron moving floor. Compare that to Facebook where everybody has the same blue-grey theme that looks like the Post Office. Then of course, before murders were committed over relationship statuses, there was the choice of “Top Friends.” This was by far the most strategic chess move on the network. Placing someone in your Top 8 meant forging an alliance, one which you hoped would be reciprocated. You would put a few of your obvious allies, a couple of extended peers, and some oddball selections to show the depth of your character. A mysterious hot girl? David Lynch? An über-cool niche label from the ’90s?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/atrak/mourning-myspace_b_1446533.html

Hipster Racism

…things like wide-eyed acoustic covers of hip-hop songs, suburban white girls flashing gang signs, and this Tweet from Zooey Deschanel: ”Haha. :) RT @Sarabareilles: Home from tour and first things first: New Girl episodes I missed. #thuglife.” See, it’s hilarious, because we aren’t thugs—we are darling girls, and real thugs are black people who do crime!

http://jezebel.com/5905291/a-complete-guide-to-hipster-racism

Related: “The White Noise Supremacists” (from the Village Voice, 1979) by Lester Bangs

5 Ways to Make Indie Bands Less Annoying

…the bottom line is that it’s fine if you want to look good, but if you spend more time carefully crafting your wardrobe and personal style than you do learning how to play your instrument, you are no different than Katy Perry or any other pop icon you love to hate.

http://blogs.houstonpress.com/rocks/2012/04/5_ways_to_make_indie_bands_less_annoying.php

And…

Vanity Fair piece on Aaron Sorkin’s (West Wing/Social Network) forthcoming show The Newsroom http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2012/05/aaron-sorkin-newsroom-sneak-peek
Is Conversation Dead? by Sherry Turkle http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/opinion/sunday/the-flight-from-conversation.html
MySpace to Relaunch Using The Old Facebook Design http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/business/myspace-spots-gap-in-market-for-old-version-of-facebook-201204195144/

Sean In Tumblr

May 24

May 20

May 17

May 16

May 08

May 03

You, Me, Technology, Music Discovery, The Future of Criticism and Everyone We Know

Apr 29