From: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org (loud-fans-digest) To: loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Subject: loud-fans-digest V6 #19 Reply-To: loud-fans@smoe.org Sender: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk loud-fans-digest Friday, January 20 2006 Volume 06 : Number 019 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: [loud-fans] warnings and promises [Michael Bowen ] Re: [loud-fans] warnings and promises [2fs ] [loud-fans] More Ghost ["B.J. Skaught" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 20:59:13 -0500 From: Michael Bowen Subject: Re: [loud-fans] warnings and promises On 1/18/06, glenn mcdonald wrote: > The music industry > would be far better off, in its own terms, if it concentrated on > finding/promoting/distributing/cultivating better music and better > musicians. I'm not sure how true this is. Rufus Wainwright, to pick an example, started on a major - I think he's still on one. All the buzz, all the promo money at their disposal hasn't made this not-just-handsome-but-glamorous, immensely talented fellow a major star. Being on Dreamworks may have helped Elliott Smith double or even quadruple his normal sales, but if I asked the 20 - 30-something media professionals in my office who he was, I doubt I'd get a response. The Arcade Fire might have sold fewer, not more, records if they were on Sony. I think a lot of us are still thinking in a 1965-1975 "rawk" mode, where there was at least a vague correlation between artistic ability and popularity. (Yes, I know dozens of exceptions to that correlation.) Nowadays, though, "rock" is the new jazz, and while we pursue our personal avenues, the mass public generally only interested in fame itself, whether it is good or bad. MB ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 20:59:19 -0600 From: 2fs Subject: Re: [loud-fans] warnings and promises On 1/19/06, Michael Bowen wrote: > On 1/18/06, glenn mcdonald wrote: > > > The music industry > > would be far better off, in its own terms, if it concentrated on > > finding/promoting/distributing/cultivating better music and better > > musicians. > > I'm not sure how true this is. Rufus Wainwright, to pick an example, > started on a major - I think he's still on one. All the buzz, all the > promo money at their disposal hasn't made this > not-just-handsome-but-glamorous, immensely talented fellow a major > star. Being on Dreamworks may have helped Elliott Smith double or even > quadruple his normal sales, but if I asked the 20 - 30-something media > professionals in my office who he was, I doubt I'd get a response. The > Arcade Fire might have sold fewer, not more, records if they were on > Sony. All true...but the problem is, I think, expectations of what a "star" is. Wainwright has released four albums on a major - as far as I know, they haven't dropped him. That right there tells me he's doing well enough (or sleeping with David Geffen). No, he's not burning up the charts...but neither did Joni Mitchell in the '70s. If labels would get used to the notion of moderating both their investment in artists and their expectations, they could profit more frequently, if not at the higher margins they get frrom megastars. I wonder what Wainwright's sales are, proportionate to overall sales. I read somewhere that in terms of numbers, a number-one record in 1969 would barely graze the top 50 these days. And neither Dreamworks nor Smith('s estate) should complain about selling x4 - but again, he developed first elsewhere. Arcade Fire may have sold fewer records on Sony - but Sony is unlikely to have moved quickly enough to catch the rising buzz on that band. (Incidentally, if they had, it's also true the band might have sold *more*: the record was sold out for a while because Merge couldn't meet demand. How many people might have bought it but didn't because it was unavailable for a while?) > > I think a lot of us are still thinking in a 1965-1975 "rawk" mode, > where there was at least a vague correlation between artistic ability > and popularity. (Yes, I know dozens of exceptions to that > correlation.) Nowadays, though, "rock" is the new jazz, and while we > pursue our personal avenues, the mass public generally only interested > in fame itself, whether it is good or bad. Well, that is the problem - and it's the model the industry both follows and creates. But nearly by definition, the "mass public" will like what it's sold, to an extent. It certainly isn't a static taste. Example: twenty years ago, Rose was wearing some particular style of pants that was relatively punky and trendy in Madison where we lived. Her rural-dwelling cousin was freaked out by the pants, and couldn't resist telling Rose how "weird" they were. Year later, the same style of pants is all over the malls, etc. Rose's cousin, of course, has a pair. Rose pointed out, hey, last year you said those pants were totally weird. Cousin says, oh no, those were *different* somehow. They weren't: what was was what Rural Cousin found acceptable, because the mediasphere had okayed it. It's similar to the way the media notion of "'80s music" focuses peculiarly on (lack of better word) "new wave" stuff...when that was mostly pretty marginal in the actual '80s. It just ended up aging better, or being more marketable later, or who knows what. In other words, if the industry decided that it was no longer economically feasible to rely on blockbuster mediagenic entertainers and instead made more sense to distribute sales among a bunch of different styles and make musicianship something that was of public value, eventually, enough of the public (notice it's a far lower number than required for the other model) would follow along. Or not - in which case the industry would try something else. This isn't exactly new, though: a lot of what we now think of as "major" labels were relatively minor in the mid-'50s, if they even existed, but they were better able to respond to the rise of rock'n'roll, and so made their fortunes. (Some "major" labels - RCA springs to mind - never quite got the whole rock'n'roll thing - with a certain obvious exception, which probably has kept the company afloat over the years.) Who knows - maybe 20 years from now Sony will be a marginal player, and we'll all be talking about the "major labels" Matador, Sub Pop, and Merge or something. On an utterly unrelated note: can we hunt down and kill whoever came up with the term "Bennifer" and mount his/her head on a pike? Cuz now they're doing that incredibly annoying name-portmanteau thing with every damned stupid Hollywood couple people are so inanely obsessed over. - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 20:34:35 -0800 From: "B.J. Skaught" Subject: [loud-fans] More Ghost I've mentioned William Duke's album, The Ghost That Would Not Be, a couple of times, but it seems like word is starting to spread a bit and now Not Lame has been stocking it. There are some mp3s at their site: http://www.notlame.com/William_Duke/Page_1/CDDUKE2.html And also at www.byebyeblackbirds.com/ghost.html It's well worth checking out for anyone interested in a kind of home made, baroque pop album with lots of analog keyboards and beautiful harmonies. B ------------------------------ End of loud-fans-digest V6 #19 ******************************