Hyped, unheard or hated music - I just can't wait!

The music press, even at the most lowly level, is guilty as charged and I'm totally guilty for writing this but you are implicated for reading it!
The whole thing is just a circus and almost always has been; now we can all add to the oxygen of publicity even if our individual contributions are small. On the other hand certain sections of the established music press can come over strange when they perceive an artist is "hyped" and thus no longer a (probably badly kept) secret. This annoys me slightly.
I'm more than willing to seek, buy and then mention music by lesser known artists if their music seems interesting to me (and sometimes only because I think it might) but I'm certainly not going to feel guilty about mentioning any artist in any category.

This artist has been hyped good-and-proper (in the UK at least) but nevertheless I like the album a great deal. If I can I'll still try to avoid borrowing photographs of the artwork by taking my own and happily this time I could.

This is my 12" vinyl version, guaranteed totally free of DRM!

Adele Adkins live in late 2007.

A great step for iTunes; a dime for consumers?

Today Apple iTunes announced that within six months (yes that quickly) it will reduce its download prices in the UK to be the same as those in Europe. That is good news, in so far as it goes, but as the EU had already decided it must so it is very tempting to suggest this is largely because it would be fined heavily if it didn't.
It is no bad thing but for consumers in the UK but it hardly constitutes a revolution: you'll pay £0.05 (€0,08) or a dime less for a download. That too is no bad thing but does it make everything right on the downloading front?
No it certainly doesn't, so just stop messing about at the edges! While price is, without doubt, important to consumers format/player incompatibility and all the associated DRM problems will remain at the top of the agenda. I'll leave you to guess which industry organisations iTunes principally blame for this situation but it is at least a start and so some credit is possibly due.

See the associated BBC news article here.

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.

New Year 2008

Yesterday I somehow lost heart with 2007 at the very last moment but that is not to say it, in any way, was a year to forget. It certainly wasn't and I would like to think that 2008 could be even better, if not for the major labels. The next big things are fairly easy to predict and the single Chasing Pavements by Adele Adkins from Brixton is almost certain to be the first of them but here, and just for starters, are two others and while the first pretty much does 21st century pop and the second 21st century folk that is not something to be held against either of them.

• The Ting Tings
• Laura Marling

Amy Winehouse, meanwhile, has serious competition in making her third album despite the new contributions by Mark Ronson. The second album by Lily Allen is likely to be important too and Ronson is likely to work on both these and also has on Adkins début. Pop will, for all its curious beauty and as I suggested yesterday, probably make a significant return in 2008 but everything live will remain at the forefront: only live performance makes money these days and so, in 2008 as in 2007, things look rather lean for the major labels.
The third in my list is American singer-songwriter Ryan Tedder, of One Republic, and were his only mention to date the writing of Bleeding Heart for Leona Lewis then that alone should be enough to ensure that he gets a major award in 2008 - the truth is that, very likely, he won't have to rely on that. Apologize, written by Tedder and co-produced with Timbaland, has done neither of them any harm.
Then there is another huge issue looming because in 2008 downloading, whether legal or otherwise, quite simply won't go away. The majors might wish it would but in fact it will become an issue more pressing than ever before and, while once again largely self-inflicted, DRM should ensure that it does.