MUSICIANS AND TECHNOLOGY

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MUSICIANS AND TECHNOLOGY

Postby Marsbar » Thu Nov 07, 2013 9:27 pm

This article is a little long - however it would be interesting to read your comments if you have any...

Google Executive: “You Cannot Devalue Music. It’s Impossible.”

The following speech was delivered this week at the Future of Music Summit in Washington, DC, by Tim Quirk, Head of Global Content Programming at Google Play.

“So I had a whole paragraph telling you who the hell I am and why you should listen to me, but [Future of Music co-director] Kristen [Thomson] just did that, so I’m gonna skip that part. I will say I have been watching the music business respond to the perils and possibilities of digital distribution for a good long time from a variety of different perspectives and I’ve become pretty opinionated on the subject. But I before I spout some of those opinions, I wanna start with one I don’t share.

It’s a typical and to me typically depressing reaction to the recent explosion of online music services. A blogger for The New Yorker posted something last year that made me sadder and sadder each time I saw someone retweeting it approvingly. It was supposedly about the tyranny of choice and how on-demand music services have made it harder to fall in love with music by making it too easy to listen to anything you feel like. But the piece was really about how much fun the writer used to have spending hours in record shops that are now closed, hunting for LPs he could take home and slowly fall in love with, and how much he misses the experience.
In other words, it was soaked in nostalgia. If the writer were 80, I’d give him a pass, but I’m pretty sure he’s younger than me, so fuck him. I mean that.

I’ve been spending more time and money than I could afford in record shops since Jimmy Carter was president. And I’ve been getting paid to figure out what aspects of that experience can and can’t be replicated online since Bill Clinton was getting impeached. And you know what that means? It means I’m old. That doesn’t mean I don’t consider my experience important; it is.
If nothing else, it’s convinced me of one invaluable rule that everything else I’ll say today flows from: Don’t fetishize the past.

I’m pretty sure that’s just good advice for living a happy life, but it’s also my rule number one for the 21st century music business in general and for digital music merchandising in particular. Don’t waste time trying to find online analogues for offline experiences. As I mentioned, I’ve been in the online music business since there’s been an online music business and that article exasperated me so much because the writer was just repeating a Chicken Little cry I hear regularly and I heard it all morning long.
“We’re devaluing music!”

It’s amazing how often people invoke that word ‘devalue’ as if it means something. It doesn’t. You know why?
Because you can’t devalue music. It’s impossible. Songs are not worth exactly 99 cents and albums are not worth precisely $9.99.

When I hear people complain about discount pricing in online stores or fret about on-demand services such as Rhapsody and Spotify, I rebut them with another rule of mine that makes me sound like a hippie but I promise I’m not:

Music is priceless.

I mean that literally and I believe that even more than I believe old people should shut up about how much better things were in our day. Here’s why. The same song will always be worth different things to different people at different times. The online music revolution hasn’t changed that. It’s simply made the fact glaringly obvious.

So the goal for every artist and every song has always been to climb this pyramid, convincing as many people as you can to part with something in exchange for listening. At first, you just want their attention. The next step is to get them to give you some money for the privilege of hearing your song whenever they happen to get the urge and as you keep climbing the pyramid, you find yourself with fewer and fewer listeners but each one who remains is happy to give you more and more money.

None of this is new. What’s new is that the casual fans no longer have to buy if they don’t want to. And while there is a lot of very real and quite justified angst that there’s not enough money coming in from everyone else to make up for that loss, those casual listeners are also exhibiting an unprecedented hunger for more and more music. That is not automatically a good thing, but it is a massive opportunity.

So what exasperated me about that New Yorker article was the writer’s seeming contention that because he no longer has the same experience digging through crates and falling in love with a hard-won find, he’s stuck at the bottom of the pyramid of everything forever. His worry doesn’t only bother me because I have a very low tolerance for nostalgia; it also upsets me because if he’s right, it means I’m failing at my job.

That job has gone by different names on different business cards for different companies over the past decade. It’s variously been called editorial music merchandising or content programming, but whatever you call it, the object’s the same. We’re here to help you through that maelstrom of musical choice. We’re here to pull people up each level of that pyramid. But we don’t do it the old-fashioned way by anointing a handful of artists geniuses and declaring selected albums masterpieces. We do it by building services that let thousands of potential masterpieces find their ideal audiences.

That’s one reason my job’s name keeps changing– it didn’t really exist before 1998. We’re not exactly record store clerks, we’re not exactly critics and we’re not exactly DJs, although our ranks include people who learned what they know doing each of those things. But in order to do whatever this job is well in the 21st century, you need something none of those professions are particularly known for.
You need to be very very humble.

Well, you need some arrogance. You still need to think you know more than the average radio listener about the history of at least one genre of music; who’s influenced whom, which of them ruled, which of them suck ass and why. But you also need to recognize just how little that matters anymore. It doesn’t matter the way it used to because now that anyone with a laptop and an internet connection has a global airplay and distribution network at her fingertips, there’s no such thing as a gatekeeper and everybody’s a tastemaker.

At the same time though, that explosion of content has created a new, less sexy need. Telling the entire world what it should and shouldn’t listen to has become far less important than simply making this overgrown musical jungle navigable. Online music services need bushwhackers carving paths from one starting point to another. We’re not gatekeepers. We’re not tastemakers. We’re park rangers.

Being a park ranger means our job isn’t to tell visitors what’s great and why. Our job is to get them from any given thing they like to a variety of other things they might. We may have our own favorite paths and being park rangers we probably even prefer the less crowded ones, but our job is to keep them all maintained so visitors to our park can chose their own adventure. They might not feel our hand on their backs as they wander, but it’s there. It’s just subtle.

So how does that work in practice? Here are three guiding principles:

There should be no dead-ends.
There should be different recommendations for different people
Context is more useful that opinions.

Principle number one means that wherever a visitor lands, there should be multiple trails leading someplace else. Principle number two means you point each visitor to the trail he or she is most likely to enjoy rather than the trails you wish they wanted. And principle number three basically means that no one cares what you think. It’s more important to give people some background information on what they’re listening to, than it is to tell them whether you personally like it or not.

Now those are my principles, not every music service uses them and it would be a boring universe if they did. But I think those three are the best for making the abundance of choice liberating rather than paralyzing, without precluding the chance that anything can happen. Imposing order on chaos is particularly important at the bottom of the pyramid, [which] I’ve labeled that the free tier.

So whenever you hear someone pontificating about music’s new world order, including me, ask yourself if the stuff they’re insisting on is going make capturing that attention and turning into something lasting easier to do or harder. But also make sure they’re not just trying to wish the present away.

Capturing people’s attention and holding on to it is the fundamental challenge for artists and labels and their managers in the 21st Century.

That New Yorker writer was lamenting the ease of discovering new things and while that makes me very impatient, it’s true that unlimited shelf space is both a blessing and a curse of digital distribution. The internet stocks everything ever recorded, including not just every single out of print record and LP, but all kinds of music that’s never been commercially available before.

So you’re not just competing with your contemporaries. You’re competing with the entire history of recorded music as well as a yearly infinite present. That’s scary but can also be exhilarating. If you’re an artist who tours incessantly, changes up the set list every night and has a fan base eager to hear every minute variation as a given tune evolves night after night, we can put that on our shelves and we can do it in something very close to real time. Not every fan wants that of course, nor does every artist. But again, no two fans are alike, if you want to treat them all the same, you still can. It’s a mistake, but you can.

But if you want to embrace the new ability to engage different types of fans in different ways, people like me are here to help however we can.

If you’re self-released, you can upload your music directly to Play and set your own price. If you’re on a label, make sure they’re delivering to us, make sure your metadata is pristine, and reach out to me to figure out how we can get creative together. Whatever we do together, please understand that music is never just a commodity to us; we’re fans first. Our mission is to turn average citizens into crazy music nerds like us. Digital distribution in general and Play in particular give us unique power to make that happen, and we take that responsibility very seriously.

Thank you.
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Re: MUSICIANS AND TECHNOLOGY

Postby John Kerr » Mon Nov 11, 2013 12:37 am

Hi David

Interesting, I do not understand why the NYT writer thought that the record store was / is the place that made it easier to find new stuff. YouTube music videos make it possible to point another person to a new discovery in music that staring at an album cover can't do.

I believe that the big challenge to the music industry is the huge catalogue of great music that we have now. There is an infinite amount of music but the amount of airplay time is finite as there is only 60 minutes to each hour.

Best regards,

Johm Kerr
Last edited by John Kerr on Mon Jan 06, 2014 12:20 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: MUSICIANS AND TECHNOLOGY

Postby plutoman » Wed Nov 13, 2013 2:20 pm

To be able to find great music you have to first learn to listen to great music of all styles, and culture. That's how great music is found. And most people don't take the time to learn that. So the dude crying about his less than favorable LP excursion, I wonder what he listens to. Because in my music world, there just isn't enough time to listen to all the great music out there. Whether it be pass present or future. (Ad plug- That's why I listen to Marsden Theater radio).
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Re: MUSICIANS AND TECHNOLOGY

Postby Marsbar » Wed Nov 13, 2013 6:20 pm

John Kerr and Plutoman you're both correct IMHO. Here's how I see it from the chair I sit in these days.

In the early days of CHUM-FM Progressive (I left CHUM-FM when they instituted a predetermined playlist) and the first 11 to 12 years of CFNY folks tuned in to hear music and find new stuff they liked and then would buy. DJs and Music Directors in those days were in fact 'Trusted Editors'. Each week scores of albums would be listened to by the MDs and the PD. In the case of the two stations I was involved with - the full albums would then be added to the on air library and the DJs would then, along with help from the audience - find the best songs for each album. Usually a good album would result in 4 to 6 songs.

Once Pandora's Box (not the internet music service) was opened with the arrival of the the Internet - music fans thought they no longer needed radio etc. Unfortunately - most radio (yes there are still a few doing it well) forgot to notice what was happening outside their own buildings. In most the Program Director became The Brand Director (silly) and Music Directors stopped listening to new music and received his/her guidance from some mysterious consultant in some far away place.

Now people had become their own Music Directors. However the number of weekly releases was and is totally astounding and perhaps even intimidating to a casual music fan. This expanded the numbers of genre but also the sub-genre. Meanwhile most radio narrowed it playlist to ridiculous totals of 400 to 500 songs. And they played those over and over and over. The music fan was expanding and entertainment outlets were shrinking.

The ROCK, it's owners and programmers deserve a standing ovation for stepping forward 10 years ago and taking a chance.
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Re: MUSICIANS AND TECHNOLOGY

Postby plutoman » Thu Nov 14, 2013 1:57 pm

Yes, marsden i've been aware of that for awhile. from What I understand is, Selkirk Industries bought all, or most, of the radio satations, back in the 90's and the musical programing became all the same, in a sense. Meaning not much variety amoung the stations. I remember going from station to station and thinking, This all sounds the same.....and I stopped listening to radio.
Now things have changed because of the New Digital World . Now we have the worlds music at our finger tips . And yes there is alot of music out there... I think, its the big guys out ther capitalizing on the marketing of music.. Its not the music being devalued, its the corporations devaluing. The more there is of something the less value it becomes. A monoculture of music sites.... just a perspective.....plutoman .
But then again, we all dont listen to or hear the same music....
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Re: MUSICIANS AND TECHNOLOGY

Postby Tyke » Sat Nov 16, 2013 1:28 am

Interesting (maybe) that his guiding principles don't mention sharing. Not in the current digital sense, necessarily, but the notion of one saying to a friend "you gotta check this out" in some context. I think there is a marketing component to music discovery. Maybe I'm talking about it from the musician's POV. One wants to be discovered. Recommendations are powerful influencers. I suppose part of my point is that there is a long way to go on this new journey of music distribution. And that's cool.
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Re: MUSICIANS AND TECHNOLOGY

Postby Xenon4U2C » Tue Nov 19, 2013 1:39 am

Hmmm, a subject I can go on and on about, but I'll try and make it short and relevant.
Well, here I go ....
I love that quote David ...
" the first 11 to 12 years of CFNY folks tuned in to hear music and find new stuff they liked and then would buy "
LOL, Damn I loved those days and remember them fondly !! That was so me, ... I would listen to CFNY and write down the songs and go
downtown Brampton to that little hole in the wall record shop " New world records " and spend half my paycheck.
I loved that little shop, The owner Terry always made sure he had the 12'' extended mixes for me.
These days record shops like that are a rare site, luckily there is one here in Barrie it's not as intimate as that
one from the old days but it serves the purpose nicely. It's sad that kids these days won't know the joy of holding
that brand new record in your hands and putting it on the turntable ... looking at the album art while it plays.
The creation of the album and art work was in itself a work of art, and just the feeling of something physical in your hands
meant something. This is NOT "fetishizing" the past as Tim Quirk would have you think.
Sure the music is what it is, but to me there is something impersonal about just downloading a digital file.
It's all about the business today, how fast can we pump it out, how much can we make.
It seems like the digital age has increased convenience so much that it has been at the expense of fun.
We live in a impersonal digital age where everyone has to be wired up and in, an age where we have to have it now.
At least he got it right when he says that Music is priceless ... it will always be.
The one good thing about the digital age is that artists that could never afford to get their music out,
now can broadcast it free online. Of course though they still face the challenge of getting it heard.
A lot of times getting drowned out by the immense tidal wave of garbage coming out of the mainstream music monster today.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that digital music is bad in a comparison to analog. Digital is what it is, just as records
are what they are. I myself have fallen in line like the rest of the sheep and because technology advances, so must I
if I want to stay current and knowledgeable. I have a nice little Mp3 collection as most people do today, but my record collection will
not collect dust either.
Tim Quirk talks mostly about music choice and distribution and availability to each listeners taste etc., but that's his job right?
He still doesn't quite get the point though that the blogger for The New Yorker was trying to convey, that's maybe
because of where his mind set is, based on his job and how the music industry is today.
Finding music today is much easier than standing in a record shop or just listening to the radio and there is nothing
wrong with that at all. That's probably a good thing really.
Vinyl will always have a special place in history to those that experienced it and to those that haven't, it's hard to explain,
because life today just isn't the same. That's just the way it is.
It seemed that at one point the vinyl record had died an inevitable death beneath the crushing weight of the digital revolution,
But it now appears vinyl records are not doomed to exist solely in my milk crates after all.
Many of today’s musicians – for instance, Soundgarden, Mumford & Sons, Tame Impala, and even
country-pop star Taylor Swift to name a few, are releasing their new albums with an option for vinyl.
I will always say that analogue offers superior sound quality over digital formats, achieving a warmer, richer, and more detailed sound.
Unlike CD's, and to a lesser extent Mp3's, the records are not compressed in any way. Yet detractors bemoan vinyl records’ susceptibility to
scratching and warping, and the resultant sound degradation.
The extent of eventual degradation is determined largely by the quality of vinyl. More often than not, records are pressed on recycled vinyl.
But in an attempt to better withstand the rigors of regular play, some modern albums are now pressed with new, heavy vinyl like back in the 70's
It may be precisely that extra level of care required when handing vinyl records that attracts serious music lovers.
Vinyl is not an idle pastime for the uninitiated. It requires commitment, and you have to know what you’re doing.
First, you have to be dedicated enough to have your own record player, which can become costly if you want to achieve exceptional sound.
Also to care properly for your prized possessions, you must store them upright, in a cool, dry area.
Finally, taking care to avoid the grooved surfaces, you must carefully place the record on the turntable, maybe using a record cleaning brush
or a static remover, then laying the needle down just so.
All of this ritual and caution fosters and necessitates a certain degree of respect for the music and its medium as I stated before.
What follows is a complete and all-consuming experience.
In contrast to the instant gratification of buying or playing a song online at the push of a button,
you’ve actually taken the time to select a record from your collection and remove it from its sleeve, building anticipation for the
moment when the needle begins to run in the grooves.
You then have no choice but to listen to the record the way the artist intended: all the way through, from start to finish
(whereas iPods mean we can now cut between tracks and across entire genres on shuffle mode).
You will most likely be fully engaged in listening to the record. Moreover, because of the restricted mobility of record players,
you associate playing your records with relaxing at home or entertaining friends, and not as a background soundtrack to some dull activity
like taking public transport, walking the dog or putting out the garbage which can make music-listening rather isolating and again somewhat impersonal.
It is perhaps this deeper motivation to pursue a genuine entertainment experience that accounts for the revival of vinyl.
I sincerely hope that is the case indeed.
I would have gone on longer but it is 1:30 am and unlike David Marsden who is a nocturnal creature I must retire my brain and
put in back in the jar for the night.
So I bid farewell for now, ... :|
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Re: MUSICIANS AND TECHNOLOGY

Postby Xenon4U2C » Tue Nov 19, 2013 2:16 am

Some funny older videos about making records ..... :D

Here's one from 1942 ...




This one is 14 years later, 1956 ...




Here's a newer one from the Canadian "how it's made" series.
Made in 2006

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Re: MUSICIANS AND TECHNOLOGY

Postby plutoman » Wed Nov 20, 2013 2:34 pm

Xenon. Why don't just write a book.. ;)
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