I could have written so much more in June...

There are, I have now learned and accepted, simply months like this.  It is not that I have been away from music, far from it in fact, but sometimes that is just the way things work out.  Nor does it mean that I have been involved in music that, to a great extent, is far away from that which I consider my mainstream.
On the subject of 'singles' I will however mention two that I like unashamedly:

• You Make Me Want To Die - The Pretty Reckless
• Self Machine - I Blame Coco

Both young and privileged artists?  Indubitably so, if in rather different ways, but both talented and determined to make it in the music industry on their own terms?

That also seems to ring true to me.  This is not what the major labels want, as you can well imagine, but currently they have to get anything they can.
Many of the new artists that they are currently releasing are not signed, in the old sense, to the label but are tied to a pre-determined distribution deal, which may or may not include music publishing.
This is not to say that all is gloom and doom. HMV recently posted good financial results, especially from its diversified music interests, particularly live promotion and ticket sales. Rest assured that I'm not about to back away from what I like either and inter alia that includes further forays into alt.folk, alt.country, Americana and the rest.
You have been warned.

Why music really matters (Part 2).

If I had arranged the timing myself (I didn't, how surprising is that?) it could hardly have been better. Illegal file sharing is, just as the name suggests, illegal as things stand. That much is a given but what should be done about the parlous state of the (major label) music industry? The reasons that it has ended up this way are certainly not subject to any obvious consensus of opinion.
The UK government has suggested a scheme under which, after warnings, persistent illegal sharers would be forcibly cut-off by their ISP. You might think that would be supported by all sectors of the music industry; that is not so and some of them have now chosen to make public a very clear manifesto:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8247376.stm

To sum it up, rather crudely I admit, it states that things have changed and no amount of wishing, or legislation, will be ever be able to turn the clock back and it is a conclusion that is not new. It is also one with which I concur.

It has not been possible to un-invent nuclear weapons but where there is a will a way can be found to limit the consequences and, had that not been the case, the last thing we would be talking about now is the 'major label' music industry. If there were any of us to talk about or do anything at all in the 'nuclear winter' I rather suspect that whatever music we could make would be more important than ever.

Or, to put it in a much more recent perspective, where would we be now if administrations of all flavours world-wide had reacted to the financial catastrophe, that was September 2008, in the way that the 'major labels' did to the impact of the internet and, thus, inevitably, downloading (whether legal or otherwise)?

I hate to think...

The Eutectic Point...

The MTV and Mercury Music awards are now both shortlisted, so it is that time of year again. I imagine that many in the major labels are wringing their hands although it is likely that they will score some successes in 2009 even if the personal cost might have been high for music industry executives in terms of bonuses.

Hiya!

'real world' --- aka 'the rest of us' --- because we've known exactly that for ages and were not paid a penny for our wisdom.

I'm happy living with my thought that that the industry is, finally, undergoing some kind of corporate cognitive therapy, resulting in a very slow transformation in terms of both self-awareness and of the changing situation. The issue is that depite (maybe even because of) the riches the-gravy-train that recorded-music history granted them for almost fifty years the magic has finally worn so thin as to have as-wide-an-appeal as a dried-out-tea-bag, awaiting its second-coming, in a student house.
It took, however, the better part of a decade for the industry to wake-up to, let alone make attempts at full engagement with, the new reality. My experience is that students learn such things much faster and probably because they simply have to.

The four major labels are certainly not out of the woods yet but at least they are trying. The real issue is that the decades of sycophantic hegemony are over; it is now a long-established industry under attack from more directions than merely those posed by the rise of illegal downloading alone. That is, however, a phenomenon that both they and the High Street music stores handled catastrophically: a case of corporate self-denial, in the face of a blindingly-obvious rapid change in circumstances, if ever there were one.
Many of the new threats are, and have every reason to remain, valid as they are quite legal and that too is largely a massive failure on the part of the existing players in the market. It is hard to say for sure but, had things been done differently and I'm not talking Draconian measures here, I can't help but think that the 'big-four' might not be in the situation in which they now find themselves.

Good luck independent labels - you are amongst the forces of the future!

Thoughts on 2009 - so what next?

Happy New Year 2009 - it's an easy thing to say or write, it just happened and it doesn't sound convincing - but what if the old one, while probably memorable, wasn't so for the right reasons?

It would be easy to simply continue as is normal now - gloom and doom all round - but ONLY if that is how you wish to look back a year from now. Look at it this way: this time last year did you expect things to be as they are now? I'd wager that, like me, you probably didn't.
It is all part of a vicarious experience and if I had to mention my highlights of 2008 then that is easy: family, friends and music in that order. I suspect that 2009 will be more of the same but perhaps rather better; there is even a slim chance that it will be the start of something much more significant. Optimism is rarely dangerous as such, although it can be highly contagious in confined spaces, and it is the one pandemic that would be welcome in 2009.

Music in 2009 looks less predictable than for some years and that is another plus point. The download revolution is maturing now and it might well mean that some little known new acts and artists are able to suddenly burst on to the scene. The major labels will continue to evolve, if perhaps still surprisingly slowly, from the behemoths of old while everyone else keeps going headlong.
Music in 2009 will be simultaneously something and everything - genres will be crossed in ways that only chimaera comes close to describing, dug up, buried, mixed-and-matched with hitherto unimagined abandon. If the sun shines on the 2009 Festival season then it is a done deal; 2009 will be a year to remember and for all the right reasons.

PS:
Whatever you have read Katie White of The Ting Tings is 25, and not 40 as some reports claim.

Live at 'Tea In The Park 2008'

If she were indeed 40 you would surely see her advertising anti-aging products on every other page of every newspaper or magazine and you simply don't!

When all else fails...

I apologise for attempting to provide a positive note concerning the current economic situation. Banks may fail, and some more probably will, but even if all four remaining 'major recording labels' were also to do so (which I suspect will not happen), while it would have a major effect on the music industry in the short term, it would not be the end of the world.

The world will still need music, just as surely it will still need banking services, but if the current modus operandi is no longer appropriate then that needs to be addressed too. I can think of one thing that has survived, maybe even thrived, in previous times of trouble and that is music.
It matters not whether you want to enjoy it for escapism or wallow in its realism for, either way, there is plenty already available to draw upon and there is no sign of a supply shortage - far from it indeed.
The established music industry has been feeling the pinch for a few years now, and long before the current economic crisis, but I have no reason to believe that is in any way likely to change as the making of music is, as far as can be reliably surmised, a human trait that transcends almost everything else and possibly even language. The recorded music industry however, as we knew it until recently, was barely fifty years old and as such thus one of the youngest dinosaurs.
I never thought I'd write this but I wonder if, as although it belatedly realised the game was up a couple of years ago, in this situation it is actually slightly ahead of the others here!
The grim reality of the rust-belt matters again and so does - whilst maybe updated - the music of uncertainty and dislocation that goes with it.
This image is reminiscent of the track 'Dusty Boxcar Wall', which was written by Eric Anderson for his 1965 album 'Today Is The Highway' and if anyone is going to cover such downbeat Americana in 2008 why shouldn't it be a short, half-forgotten, tale of despondency reinterpreted by a female artist born in Boise, Idaho in 1979?

I for one can't see any problem with that.

This image, and the cover version of the song, come from the 2008 album 'Letters from Sinners and Strangers' by now Boston-based singer-songwriter Eilen Jewell. The rest of the album is a mixture of covers and self penned tracks that, unless you know better, are often indistinguishable - it is a wonderful album.She also plays harmonica, a long neglected instrument, to great effect on several tracks and no major label got a look-in here - it was released by Signature Sounds Recordings and all credit to them for doing that.

DRM in 2008 - the first skirmishes...

I mentioned this not so long ago and while it has long been obvious that the recording industry and its consumers were in no way in agreement about DRM 2008 looks like the year which it will become a real issue.
That will be much to the detriment of the former because they apparently thought they could continue to run rough-shod over their consumers (and often their artists as well) as they had arguably done for decades. The former, rather predictably I think, responded by deciding that they too could play the game and now artists are starting to consider doing without the very same. As a service industry - for that is what major labels, in particular, now are - and one with a rather poor recent record for spotting trends in artists, or even more tellingly technology, it is surely vulnerable for it risks simultaneously losing the confidence of both its suppliers and consumers.

Today, in the UK at least, some guidelines for consultation and further discussion were published by the government and they make quite interesting reading. Here is the BBC news post about these proposals and I' m quite sure these will only make the whole thing a much hotter potato still! It is a matter that certainly needs to be properly addressed sooner rather than later; don't expect any easy consensus this year however.
The longer it goes on, one near certainty is the greater will be the damage to the traditional music industry in the long term and some predict that, within a decade, the CD will be defunct. It is quite plausible, and wholly so were it not for the persistence of vinyl; far fewer have said that in a decade there will also be no longer be any 'major labels' and that is something that, while I'm not one to place bets, for cash or favours or anything else, I think that I would regard as the least surprising result.