Jeff Albert's blog and podcast home
Brad Farberman talks to Jeff about his upcoming Bandcamp Friday compilation to support live music venues, meeting people on twitter, and other stuff.
https://bradfarberman.bandcamp.com
Brad on twitter (for dad jokes): https://twitter.com/BradFarberman
Disclaimer: All of the sales numbers I talked about were made up. Lies, damn lies, and statistics.
Ken Vandermark is a Chicago based musician and organizer. He helped found Catalytic Sound, and they recently started their own streaming service. Jeff and Ken talk about that…and other stuff.
https://stream.catalyticsound.com
And…if you need the visual stimulation of watching Ken and I talk on zoom, you can see the conversation here: https://youtu.be/_Ybep71Vbxc
Music Minds: a music industry hub for educational content + resources is a simple website linking to web based music industry events. The events are categorized into business, health, production, technology, and venues.
There is a new record out by a band that is made up of a former student and sometimes colleague. It is quite good. The record is very well produced slightly quirky pop music. Not my usual space, but I really like it. I was going to write a short review and encourage you all to go listen to it. I prefer to link directly to a band’s website, so they can control how their work is presented, instead of a facebook or youtube page. I finally found this band’s website, even though a search of the band’s name and music did not easily get me there.
When i got to the website, I realized I could not listen to the band. The media page only hosts pictures. There is a link to an Instagram account, but no bandcamp, youtube, spotify, apple music…nothing. The pictures are really good, but I am trying to help people HEAR THE MUSIC!!!! Why is hearing the music not the easiest thing to do on your website?
It is kind of a bummer, because the music is pretty good. Hopefully the next thing that catches my ear will have a website with sounds…
The last time this blog was REALLY active, Spotify was not yet a thing, Napster was a problem, iTunes only sold downloads, and MySpace was still a real thing. A lot has happened since then, and I wonder, are we better off? I ask this question in two domains: how people hear our music, and how we connect with the people who (may) want to hear our music.
Let’s start with how people hear our music. I probably wrote somewhere on this blog something to the effect of, “once we find a way for cheap easy legal music distribution, piracy will be a thing of the past (or at least we will quit talking about it).” That has become true. It is now way easier for people to hear my music, and I believe more people are hearing my music. I’m probably not making much less money from recorded music now than I was then. Those all sound like wins, but my concern is around the question of control. Since people are getting to my music through Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, or even Bandcamp, I am in a position in which a policy change by any of these companies can effect how I get music to the people who want to hear it. What happened to the internet being democratizing, and removing the middle men (people/entities/bots?)? Why can’t I simply directly interact with my listeners?
Which brings me to how we interact with our listeners (or friendly experiencers to quote a favorite artist). Social media has the same problem streaming services have: when they change policy it thwarts our plans to reach people. I liked email lists…apparently I was the only one. How do we get to a system that lets people get the information they want from the artist/label/venue directly? I don’t want to have to figure out Facebook algorithms (or Instagram or whoever, and yes, I know they are really the same thing) to get to people who already know they want information from me (or my series or whatever). I get playing the social media game to find new listeners, but can we be in control of the relationships we already have? Is text/SMS lists the new thing?
I would love it if you would comment with your thoughts.
The money or art conversation came up in class the other day. This article takes some interesting looks at the topic. Note the articles preference for and use of the word art…
Comparing Artists To Start-Ups Lazy, Unhealthy, Beside The Point. – hypebot:
“Comparing artists to start-ups is a trend that has emerged this last couple of years as music and tech became ever more increasingly tied and the latter churned out its daily dose of spectacular stories and unicorns. When a particular field is successful, it would be a shame not to try to find some key take aways and apply them to an ecosystem like music where everything has been challenged and turned upside down these last 15 years or so.”
I recently finished reading How Music Got Free: the end of an industry, the turn of the century, and the patient zero of piracy by Stephen Witt (Penguin Random House).
It is a compelling account of the end of the era of major label largess told through the concurrent tales of a label executive, technology innovator, and early pirate. It doesn’t offer answers to the industry’s current problems, but it does help explain how we ended up where we are. Witt is a skilled story teller and it is an enjoyable read. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the inner workings of the music industry, and related technology.
Yesterday on the radio, I heard an inspiring conversation about local news coverage, journalism, and democracy. Newspapers were a big part of the conversation.
A little backstory: After Hurricane Katrina, our neighborhood lost our curbside recycling service. Not long after that, I cancelled my newspaper subscription. I was not reading it very often, and since we couldn’t recycle it, I had some tree guilt.
The radio show yesterday made me rethink my newspaper situation. We have curbside recycling again, and I feel like I should aim to be a better informed citizen, so I decided to investigate getting a newspaper subscription. In the time since I cancelled my Times-Picayune subscription, the T-P has gone from a daily to publishing a hard copy only three days a week, and The Advocate has come into the New Orleans market.
I went to the T-P site first. Apparently you have to give all of your personal info and start a website account to find out how much a subscription costs. If the information is there otherwise, it was not easy to find. So I went to The Advocate’s website. They had a page with links to “See Prices.” That link opened a popup in which you enter your zip code, and click the “See Prices” button, and…nothing happens.
I possibly would have subscribed to both papers this morning, ended up with neither. Have they given up on this side of their business? Should I give up too and just commit to paying more attention to local web news?
A note to the apparent morons who run the state in which I live: I WILL PAY MORE TAXES TO SUPPORT HIGHER EDUCATION!!!!!!!!!
The nature of Louisiana’s backwards legal system makes much of the state’s budget protected and very hard to adjust, except for higher education, which is easy for the legislature to cut. Our governor, who pays lip service to a religion that is supposed to be based on helping the poor and caring for our fellow humans, refuses to allow taxes to be raised for any productive reason. I think he (and his fellow lawmakers of similar political ideology) does this not out of a sense that it is really the right thing to do, but out of a loyalty to a political party that places money above all else, and even then, really just the money of people who already have a lot of it. The lawmakers of Louisiana, led by our governor, are cowards, who are afraid of the dogmatists of their own party, to the point that they will do nothing to help the people of our state in any way.
I actually voted for Jindal. I thought he was a smart man, and he made me believe that he would use that intelligence to run our state well. I did not realize at the time that his political aspirations would out weigh all other considerations to the point that he would be incapable of straying one millimeter from republican dogma, even if it is the best thing for our state.
I got both of my graduate degrees from state schools (the University of New Orleans for my M.M., and Louisiana State University for my Ph.D.). The system worked well for me. These degrees helped me learn many things, and led to me getting a great teaching job and staying in our state. I can now afford to pay more in taxes, and I would love to do that if that is what is needed to keep our higher education system alive.
One more note to our lawmakers: PLEASE LET GO OF YOUR POLITICAL DOGMA AND USE THE BRAINS THAT GOD GAVE YOU TO MAKE DECISIONS WITH THE WELL-BEING OF YOUR STATE IN MIND!
This nola.com article offers a good perspective on the amount of the cuts that are being envisioned.
Cutting Louisiana higher education by $300 million, putting it into perspective | NOLA.com
Creativity Becomes an Academic Discipline – NYTimes.com: “What’s igniting campuses, though, is the conviction that everyone is creative, and can learn to be more so.”
This is an underlying theme for us in the Loyola Music Industry program.