On Music

Rollo Grady, the music-news blog, has recently posted some great interviews on the music business. First up Seth Godin, respected online marketing entrepreneur/guru, discusses his thoughts on the changes in how we discover and consume pop music, being a successful artist or music business and tribe building.

"...music labels used to be in the business of grabbing shelf space, on the radio and in the record store. Now, the music industry needs to realign and be in the business of finding and connecting and leading groups of people who want to follow a musician and connect with the other people who want to do the same."

The full interview with Seth Godin is on Rollo Grady and hes interviewed aboutthe ideas in his book Tribes in Wired Magazine.

Also on Rollo Grady is an interview with the former longtime presenter of KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic. Nick Harcourt discusses his new book Music Lust and how he was the first guy playing Coldplay in the USA. Ok, so don't hold that against him, its still an interesting chat.

"What I think is the album format is probably dead. People don’t listen to albums anymore. They just listen to songs and buy the songs they want. I think the world has to adapt to that because clearly that is how people are listening. The Internet had a lot to do with that. The iPod and MP3 players have an awful lot to do with the way people listen to music now."

Finally there's a really good chat with RCRD LBL's Peter Rojas, who I listen to every week presenting the GDGT podcast, which looks broadly at new technology and gadgets. Peter Rojas also started Gizmodo and Engadget. Yep, famous.

RCRD LBL itself is "a network of online record labels and blogs serving up fresh new music downloads and exclusive content." Its an incredible resource that is becoming an essential connection for people passionate about discovering new music. Peter Rojas talks to Rollo Grady about music blogs and the strategies that have made RCRL LBL such a success:

"You have to create something that people who really know what’s going on with music, those who are the most in touch and paying the most attention, are going to find credible and real. We can’t just throw a bunch of bands out there; its bands that we really believe in. The key is finding people with their ears to the ground, discovering great new music, kind of like A&R people."

And if you are interested in music criticism in Melbourne or Australia I'd suggest keeping an eye on Channel 31 in early March when Clem Bastow hosts Dancing About Architecture.

1994

I have my lazy blogger socks on at the moment - no time, even less enthusiasm. There's so many gigs on this weekend i could plug: Songs/Love of Diagrams split 7" launch; Tame Impala at The Espy for free tomorrow etc. Good shit. Great for the soul. Beat has the word (of course).

But for the moment I'll get the self-indulgence on and just plug my DJ gig next Friday at the Red Room at Roxanne in the city. I'll be spinning music from 1994, a golden year for some... a shitstorm of mediocrity for others. Its free entry, and a chance to rock out to daggy/awesome tracks from Blur, Beasties, Charlatans, Pavement, Weezer, Hole, NIN etc. Feel free to suggest some tunes... and check the flyer for details!

I Love Love

Pitchfork TV have a great documentary about influential American band Love online now, free for one week only.

"Love Story offers a detailed retrospective of the influential band Love. Directed by Chris Hall & Mike Kerry, the documentary features extensive interviews with Arthur Lee and other original band members. Available at Start Productions."

Thanks to Zan for the tipoff.

Love's Forever Changes, is of course dissected and discussed. If you don't already have it in your collection, its an absolute must-own...

"One of rock's most overlooked masterpieces, this third album by the L.A. folk-rock outfit led by inscrutable singer-songwriter Arthur Lee sounds as fresh and innovative today as it did upon its original release in 1968. With David Angel's atmospheric string and horn arrangements giving the work a conceptual underpinning, Lee explores mainstream America's penchant for paranoia ("The Red Telephone") and violence ("A House Is Not a Motel") with songs that are as sonically subtle and lilting as they are lyrically blunt and harrowing." -Amazon

Free

Anyone working or interested in PR, economics, marketing and general online trends in music or any content should subscribe to Seth Godin's blog. He always has something interesting to say, or some great article or snippit of wisdom to share. Today he's pointing to an excellent post by Kevin Kelly about free. Seth sums up Kevin's article thus:

"when there are infinite copies of something, charging for one is almost impossible."

And as Kevin says in his own post:

"The internet is a copy machine. Every bit of data ever produced on any computer is copied somewhere. The digital economy is thus run on a river of copies. Unlike the mass-produced reproductions of the machine age, these copies are not just cheap, they are free."

Why pay for something that is free? In my post yesterday I urged you, if you enjoyed the music within the podcast, to get out and support the artist with some of your hard-earned. But why would you? Well, one reason could be that of 'patronage'. Kevin describes this as one of eight "generatives" that are better than free.

"A generative value is a quality or attribute that must be generated, grown, cultivated, nurtured. A generative thing can not be copied, cloned, faked, replicated, counterfeited, or reproduced. It is generated uniquely, in place, over time. In the digital arena, generative qualities add value to free copies, and therefore are something that can be sold."

The full article is here and worth a read.