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.

http://catalyticsound.com

https://stream.catalyticsound.com

https://ess.org/option/

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

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…

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.

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.”

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.

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?

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

This is an underlying theme for us in the Loyola Music Industry program.

Then it hit me. Regular people don’t buy these books. Libraries or institutions may buy them. Sometimes students are forced to buy them under the duress of it being a required text for a class. In all of these instances, there is a layer of financial bureaucracy between the user and the book publisher. Even in the case of students, it is often student loan money or some other financial aid that buys their text books, so it doesn’t feel like “real” money.

This is similar in principle to the way healthcare costs have risen because there is a layer of “insurance” companies between the providers and the patients. There are financial transactions between doctors and insurance companies, and between insurance companies and patients, so the cost of each individual transaction gets obfuscated by the layers of financial (insert expletive here) between the doctors and patients. The patients don’t pay directly for the services, so they don’t get outraged at how much it costs.

Similarly, if my university library is paying some outrageous sum of money every year for access to online journal databases, but my colleagues and I are the ones using the databases, no one is in a position to get mad about the cost. The users don’t see the cost, and for the folks who pay the bills, it is just another bill to pay. It’s like financial three card monty. Just keep things confusing enough so that no one notices or thinks about it.

It seems like a very inefficient system for the outsides of the system, and very lucrative one for those who create the layers of obfuscation in the middle.

Why do we let this happen? Is it because we need a super expensive publisher to legitimize our writings to the tenure committee? There has to be a better way.

If that book had been $40, this post wouldn’t have happened, that publisher would have 40 of my dollars, and I would be waiting for what seems to be an interesting book to arrive in my mailbox.

In recent weeks I have read the complaints of a number of people about the amounts of money that performers are paid in “creative music” situations. I know that I could spend an entire book weeding out meaning from the term “creative music,” so let me just clarify that I mean art music that is outside of the economic mainstream.

One of the people who inspired this post simply thinks that the musicians should “make” the clubs sign a union contract and pay a good wage. If music is part of the club’s business model, in the way that a band on Bourbon St. is there mostly to make the party happen, and making the party happen is how the club makes money, then I agree. The market sets a price for beer, and it should also set a price for the band. Both the beer and the band are part of the formula that the club uses to make money. We should also note, that in these situations, the band plays what the club wants them to play. These are craftsman musicians who are hired to provide a service for an employer. The club takes the risk, the band simply provides a service.

This isn’t really the situation I am thinking about.

What about a situation in which I (the hypothetical artist) have a band and some new music, and we want a place to play this music. This is original music, and it isn’t particularly mainstream. My goal is to find a place to present this music, and in doing so build an audience, and make some money.

Some venues pride themselves on presenting new music. It is part of their business model. Let’s take a “best case scenario” for the artist version of this situation, and assume that our hypothetical venue is dedicated to presenting new music. For our little thought experiment here, the genre of this new music isn’t really important, we just have to stipulate that the new music is made by an artist who is not yet well known.

Where does the money come from?

One version of the “unknown band” plan is to offer free entrance to entice more people in to hear the music. I won’t go into my arguments about why it is a bad idea to present yourself with the implication that your performance has no value. If there is no cover charge, then all of the band’s money must come from the bar. Giving the band 20% of the bar ring is on the generous side of standard. If 50 people come to your gig, and each of them has three drinks, and the drinks average $7 each, then the bar ring is $1,050. 20% of that bar ring is $210.

The cover charge scenario is the other way to go. With a $5 cover that goes entirely to the band (which can be rare), those same 50 people generate $250 for the band. Now, will there still be 50 people there with a $5 cover? Probably a question for another post.

Based on these numbers, when you get to audiences of 200 or so, you get to numbers that can support budget style touring (a van and couches). As cover charges can go up, the numbers change. The math isn’t difficult. The point is that the money for the band either comes directly from the audience (cover charge/ticket sales) or indirectly from the audience (percentage of bar sales). No matter how you look at it, audience size is the determining factor in terms of available money for the artists.

Who is responsible for bringing the audience? That may be another post.

The point is when there are 50 people in the audience to hear my great new music for the first time, and the band makes a total of $300, then we did a pretty good job of converting audience into dollars.

$300 a night for an entire band is not a living wage.

This raises more questions. Am I entitled to a living wage from my art? Do I make art as a financial sustenance or just for psychic sustenance? Do we, as audience members, have a moral obligation to financially support the artists whose work we enjoy? Do we, as artists, have a moral obligation to freely share our art with the world? Are there other places to find money besides the bar and the door? (I consider merchandise sales to be a separate income stream from the performance fee.)

The answers to the above questions can inform our search for answers about how to increase the amount of money performers make for live performances.

Primary responsibilities include teaching in the areas of Internet technologies and web development within the context of Music Industry Studies. Must be able to teach usage of HTML 5, CSS, and PHP or other dynamic languages. Emphasis on marketing using social media and other platforms required. Secondary duties may include teaching in other areas of music industry technology including smartphone/tablet apps, new approaches to content delivery, and related areas of expertise, potential for the development of distance learning programs, work in a collaborative manner and fulfill various roles in college and university activities, serve as an academic advisor and mentor to students, assist with departmental websites and student workers, and other duties as assigned.

Other specifics can be found here: http://finance.loyno.edu/human-resources/faculty-employment-opportunities. The full consideration date is June 15, 2013 and the gig starts in August. If you or someone you know want to live in New Orleans and teach aspiring young musicians and entrepreneurs, in a setting with a good bunch of colleagues, please apply. I’d be happy to answer any questions as well.

A Simple Reason Why Audiences Are So Small For New Music Concerts « Elissa Milne:

“Live concerts (or any live events) are built on a fan-base, so if you have no fans you have a limited chance of attracting an audience. This holds true for a pub band as much as it does for a purveyor of experimental sound art. Any performer needs to build an audience if they want to have an audience.

Now I do appreciate that there has been an aesthetic of writing with no thought for connection with listeners, but seriously people, if you write with no consideration of how you are building your audience you can hardly be surprised when you don’t have one.

And yeah, it’s your audience. It’s not the audience for ‘new music’ or ‘experimental music’ or ‘art music’. It’s the group of people in your neighbourhood, community, workplace, internet forums, facebook groups and twitterfeed who are interested in what you do. That’s what an audience is: it’s a bunch of people who care about your work so much that they want to participate. By being there. By being close to the action. By giving you money so you’ll keep doing what you do.”

(Via @pbailey.)

‘It Can’t Be Done’: The Difficulty Of Growing A Jazz Audience : A Blog Supreme : NPR: “Jazz simply needs to continue doing what made it great in the first place: engage with popular culture in an intelligent, nuanced and sophisticated manner, as some successful groups are doing today. If there is any hope of audience building, this is where it lies. It must be organic, visceral and culturally relevant, qualities which cannot be consciously conjured by an audience development committee.”

(Via @tedgioia.)

Search And Restore: New Orleans is a 3 day festival (April 30th-May 2) celebrating the incredible new jazz musicians, creative composers and improvisers operating in New Orleans today, organized by Adam Schatz (founder of Search & Restore), Justin Peake (founder of the Merged series @ the Dragon’s Den) and Jeff Albert (founder of the Open Ears series @ the Blue Nile)

There is a Kickstarter campaign in place. I know I am always curious about how the Kickstarter money will be used. Your donations will help us guarantee a fair fee for every musician performing in the festival, with equal pay going to every artist in an effort to truly value the work. This financial security will allow us to go above and beyond with promoting the event, so that we can expose bigger and newer audiences to this vital community, and we hope you will be a part of it too!

Please pledge at the $600 level. It is the only way my wife will let me have my favorite summer hair style…

Wow, two posts in row pointing out friends who are asking for money. I guess such is the world in which we live. The truth of the matter is that the old system of media/entertainment/art/whatever is dying. It no longer does any sort of good job at producing interesting and fulfilling material. The job of producing good stuff has fallen to the artists themselves, and other people who are personally vested in quality. That is why we have artists making and funding their own records now, and that is why some of our best music journalism is done by independent bloggers and podcasters.

This stuff has to be paid for in one way or another. With artists making CDs, the answer is fairly easy: buy their CDs. Jason Crane, who produces the fabulous music interview podcast called The Jazz Session, has adopted a somewhat public radio style way of trying to make his show economically feasible. He is seeking members, people who will make an ongoing commitment to financially support the show. We do these things (produce podcasts, run music series, etc) because we love to do them, but it does cost money to make them happen. Sometimes we can subsidize it from our personal lives, and sometimes we have to ask the people who enjoy this work to step up and help pay for it.

I love Jason’s show. I listen to it regularly and have learned a lot from the interviews. Jason has a wide ranging aesthetic and does a great job of giving exposure and forum to artists whose work falls left of the mainstream. I am a member.

I would recommend that you go to the website and listen to a show or two. There is a long list of artists from which to choose. I particularly enjoyed the Ken Filiano and David Weiss interviews. If you like what you hear and feel it deserves your support, you can join here: http://thejazzsession.com/join/

The show needs about 15 more members by the end of Thursday August 11 for it to continue.

Recently Kickstarter, and similar sites, have become a popular way of trying to finance recording projects. It is not difficult to see how this could seem more appealing than the personal savings method of financing. There has been a good bit of reaction to this trend, both positive and negative, and some insight as well.

All of this brings me to a new Kickstarter project I was recently asked to support. It is Steve Swell’s Nation of We. Steve has taken the curious angle of running the campaign to pay his band. It is not uncommon for artists to make a recording on their own, and then have a label pick it up. It is also not uncommon for the label to pay the musicians in product, i.e. the musicians provide the master, the label pays for pressing and distribution, and the musicians get paid in product (CDs they can sell themselves to make their money). Unless the CD really sells a lot, there is often no exchange of cash between the label and the musicians. NB: I don’t know that this is Steve’s deal on this CD, I just know it is common practice.

Part of me wants to complain about what a shame it is that we have to resort to organized begging to pay musicians for their creative work. The other part of me thinks it is cool that Steve wants to do right by his band, and that using Kickstarter to offer what amounts to CD pre-orders is a great idea. I’ll save the long form rant for a time when my thoughts on the matter or better organized.

I supported this project, and recommend that you check it out and see if it is something you would like to support as well.

Of course this post about New Orleans musicians in the poll is just an excuse to mention that I am listed in the Rising Star Trombone category this year. While I could name a number of other trombone players whose work I admire greatly who are not on the list, it does feel good to know that people are noticing what I am doing. And apparently some other New Orleans musicians are getting noticed as well.

We have our already world renowned musicians who still live in New Orleans, like Terence Blanchard, Herlin Riley, and Nicholas Payton, who got their expected mentions in the Jazz Group, Drums, and Trumpets lists. Our clarinet scene is well represented by Evan Christopher, Dr. Michael White, and Tim Laughlin. NOLA placed 3 trombonists in 4 spots on the Trombone and Rising Star Trombone lists. Delfeayo Marsalis and Trombone Shorty made the grown-ups tableTrombone list, and Trombone Shorty and I were at the kid’s table on the Rising Star Trombone list. It was also nice to see Kidd Jordan get some critic’s love, along with Jason Marsalis on vibes, John Boutté (Rising Star Male Vocalist), and Matt Perrine on sousaphone. I was especially pleased to see Jonathan Freilich on the Rising Star Guitar list and Aurora Nealand on the Rising Star Soprano Saxophone list, both well deserved.

The magazine lists the critics who vote in the poll, and I believe that only two of the voters in this year’s poll are New Orleans residents. The way the scoring works, one must appear on the ballots of at least three critics to make the list, so it is nice to know that critics from outside of New Orleans are aware of what we are doing here, and not just the stereotypical “New Orleans Music” version of what we are doing here, but some of the more creative aspects as well. I got 32 points, which means that at least six critics had my name on their ballot. To those of you who have noticed what I have been doing, thank you, I deeply appreciate the attention.

I hope I can handle the huge influx of CD orders. That is what happens after one makes one of these lists, right?

I don’t want to be forced into a system that is controlled by a single entity. I think it becomes dangerous. The world wide web was built on the premise of open standards and open access. Sir Tim Berners-Lee recently wrote a great article for Scientific American on the occasion of the 20th Anniversary of the world wide web. The whole thing is a worthy read, but I will quote only a few paragraphs here:

The Web evolved into a powerful, ubiquitous tool because it was built on egalitarian principles and because thousands of individuals, universities and companies have worked, both independently and together as part of the World Wide Web Consortium, to expand its capabilities based on those principles.

The Web as we know it, however, is being threatened in different ways. Some of its most successful inhabitants have begun to chip away at its principles. Large social-networking sites are walling off information posted by their users from the rest of the Web. Wireless Internet providers are being tempted to slow traffic to sites with which they have not made deals. Governments—totalitarian and democratic alike—are monitoring people’s online habits, endangering important human rights.

If we, the Web’s users, allow these and other trends to proceed unchecked, the Web could be broken into fragmented islands. We could lose the freedom to connect with whichever Web sites we want. The ill effects could extend to smartphones and pads, which are also portals to the extensive information that the Web provides.

The idea that I can link to any site on the web, and any site can link here, and any user can follow those links is foundational.

From Hypebot:

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg used last week’s Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco to share his most sweeping vision yet of how Facebook will fundamentally change the music, film, TV and media industries within the next five years. Zuckerberg believes strongly that insurgent entrepreneurs will “reform” the music, film, TV, news, e-commerce and perhaps many other industries using Facebook as a platform. Facebook will then profit from the value that it has added to the new landscape through advertising and, perhaps, other partnerships.

I saw a billboard today (along I10 in Baton Rouge) for a well known brand of vodka. The website listed on the billboard was the company’s Facebook page. I don’t get it. It’s not like this company doesn’t have its own web presence. I have been told that companies like Facebook, because it has “all those users”, but “all those users” are also available on the open web, plus many more.

Have we forgotten about the last days of AOL, when they were trying to control our internet experience? We should heed the warnings of Sir Berners-Lee and be vigilant for the open web. We will be in trouble if it slips away while we aren’t paying attention, and the curmudgeon in me wants to say that that is exactly what Facebook would like to happen.

When we made our connection in Barcelona, it was a different story. As soon as I entered the plane, I saw the two guitars in the flight attendants area, and thought that we might be in for the same scene, but the flight attendant then told me that I must check my trombone, and said the same to Jeb, actually following him down the isle because he didn’t notice the trombone right away.

I explained that I have flown many times, and the trombone always fit, and that that very morning we had flown on the same airline in the same model aircraft, and it fit just fine, but he adamantly said that there was no other way but to check them with the luggage. We asked if they would gate check them, so that we got them back right at the plane door in Belgium, but he aid that was impossible because they must go through security in Belgium (which was a stupid excuse because the flight would be over at that point, and they had already gone through security). We soon realized that his sole intent seemed to be to exercise his power to see that we were not satisfied customers. Several flight attendants were involved in these conversations, but none of them seemed to have any interest in solving the problem in a reasonable fashion. They kept saying that they were not allowed to make exceptions. He then said that if we want to bring the horns on, we must purchase a seat for them. i said “great, how much are the seats,” and he said, “well, it is too late now to do that,” even tough that had been offered (by a different FA) as a option early in the guitar negotiations in Seville. I left my horn and sat down. Jeb continued to argue that he didn’t trust the latches on his case and asked for tape, which they didn’t have, but eventually the guy told Jeb that he would put his horn in a closet in the cockpit. Jeb asked about mine and he said, “No, it goes under.” So even though they weren’t allowed to make exceptions they did.

I tried to be nice and not become enraged or be a jerk, but that didn’t pay off. I got screwed because I was trying not to be rude to the people. Eventually Hervé left the plane (and caught a later flight on a different airline) because he would not allow them to check his guitars. That seems to have been the right call. My horn was checked, and when I got to it in baggage claim in Brussels, the bell was severely damaged. The case has a big roughed up scuff where it was dropped and that spot aligns perfectly with the damage that was done.

The claims office in the Brussels airport says there is no recourse because the case wasn’t damaged (the big scuff is normal wear and tear). I have insurance and we’ll see how that shakes out. A wonderful repairman, named Jos Briers, in Genk fixed my horn so that I can finish the tour, but that bell will never be the same.

I have never before encountered personnel in an allegedly customer service oriented position that showed so little interest in helping the customer find a viable solution to a difficulty. I have never dealt with another airline that had what seemed like an active vendetta against musical instruments.

The things I have learned from this:

1- If they make me check my horn, I will leave the flight. (Gate check is different) Getting to the gig with an unplayable instrument is the same as missing the gig.

2- The people in Belgium, specifically Taxi Peters Genk and Jos Briers, and great helpful wonderful people.

3- I will never again board a flight operated by Vueling.

Vueling code shares with Iberia and they are part of the OneWorld system along American Airlines. I would like to publicly ask AA to disassociate with these people. I know when I deal with AA that I am dealing with a real airline, when I deal with their partners, I would like to be able to know the same, and in the case of Vueling that is simply untrue.

These are questions that all artists (and scholars) must be willing to ask and answer. It is refreshing to see it done so openly.

“Why do some bands get attention and others don’t? One of the simplest things those who feel shunned can do is have a print quality photo (a jpg that’s 300 dpi and shot by at least a semi-pro) that can be easily found online.”

Alex Rawls (editor of offBeat) offers some good advice for musicians looking for press coverage.

Of course, I thought that they covered me because they liked the music, come to find out it was just because I had usable photos on my website. Oh well, any press is good press.

“Interviewer:
Have you ever gone into the studio and had someone say, ‘I want you to sound like the guy who did the drums on … ?’

Shelly Manne:
I did a date with Jimmy Bowen, the song was ‘Fever.’ I had never worked with Jim, but I had made the original record of ‘Fever’ with Peggy Lee. It actually said on my part, ‘play like Shelly Manne.’ So I played it just like I played it originally. The producer stormed out of the control room, walked over to me and said ‘Can’t you read English? It says ‘play like Shelly Manne.’

When I told him I was Shelly Manne, he turned around and went back into the booth. I think he’s selling cars now.”

Energy Efficiency in the Arts | SOUNDSLOPE:

“An interesting feature of the career of any successful modern jazz or creative musician is the huge reliance on the European market for work. I don’t have any numbers to back up this claim but I know through conversations and anecdotal evidence that the ability to play in Europe regularly is an essential part of any musician’s career who attempts to play this music as a full time occupation.

…

How would our artists be effected if it was no longer practical for promoters in Europe to fly them over for gigs due to rising transportation costs? Or, even if they could continue to do so, if it cut into the artists’ bottom line, essentially coming out of their paycheck?”

I’m all for world travel in the name of music making (I’m heading to Europe in a week and a half myself), but as Dan alludes, it would be great if we could make good livings closer to home.

I use Creative Commons licenses on some of my work. It is part of my idea of being able to share some of my music and build relationships with other music lovers. They are a non-profit, which means, like your public radio station etc., that every once in a while they come asking for money to keep things running. Now is that time. They are pretty close to making their Dec 31 fundraising deadline. If you would like to help them out, or just find out more, click the button above.

I know it would take forever to get locals to call it anything else, but maybe the time has come for the New Orleans Music and Heritage Festival (presented by Shell, or Miller Lite, or whoever).

He is taking one of the more interesting angles in web 2.x promotion, by inviting his audience to cover, remix, or make a video with his music. Watch his intro below, or hit the youtube page for more info.

While not a fan of the blog link me too thing, I am about to do just that. Click the above link and read what Durkin has to say about the “why” of what we do. It answered some questions that I have asked myself.

It’s a protest, really. A piece of performance art. An existential gesture of radical self-determination. The physical evocation of an alternate reality. A demonstration that even under the worst circumstances, it’s important to hold your ground.

Too many jazz tribute shows leave little room for innovation – Kansas City Star:

“Concert and club presenters sometimes fret that jazz doesn’t bring in crowds like it used to. But is booking tribute shows the way to bring the crowds back or to build a new audience for the future?

Some tribute shows make a populist appeal. (Hear the Sinatra hits! Hear swing played the way it used to be played!) Some try to serve as gateways to greater jazz appreciation. (Celebrate the 80th anniversary of the classic recordings by Blind Willie Dunn’s Gin Bottle Four! Hear an evening of Wayne Shorter’s music played by people whose fees are lower than his!)”

(Via @accujazzradio.)

So if you want to take advantage of the new catalog and get some old Columbia sides, like I Sing The Body Electric maybe, the numbers break down like this.

Old way: 7 tracks for 7 credits, which cost you roughly $0.30 each. You can choose which tracks you do or don’t want.

New way: 6 tracks for 6 credits, which cost you roughly $0.50 each, and an additional 6 credits if you also want “Medley” which is track 5. If you want “Medley” at all you must buy the other six tracks. I’m not sure that there is anything special about “Medley” other than the fact that it is 10:40 long.

It seems that most of the “album only” stuff is about the length of the track. If someone can explain to me how this is better, I might not cancel my subscription when it runs out next month.

If you have read this blog for long, you have probably realized that I am a big eMusic fan, or at least that’s what some people tell me. When I heard that eMusic was adding some major label back catalog, I thought it was interesting. Today when I realized that I would be forced to a new plan at an over 100% price increase, it was much less cool. Now I am on a plan that has been grandfathered in. I have had this plan for three years, and I understand that prices rise, but not 100% at a time. If they said they had to change my plan, and I would only get 60 downloads a month instead of 65, for the same money, I might be ok with that. If they said that I would still get 65 downloads a month, but it would be $160 a year now in stead of the roughly $145 a year it has been, that might be ok. What they told me was that my plan would be changed to $129.99 a year, and I’d get 24 downloads a month. “You’ll only have to pay 90% of what you were paying to get 37% as much music.” ¿que? Is some old Sony catalog worth that?

I have loved eMusic as a place to explore. I have heard lots of music that I likely wouldn’t have gambled $10 on, but would gladly give up 8 or 9 prepaid downloads to be able to check it out. This price change is a bit too much of a shock for me. I think I will let my subscription lapse. It’s a shame.

I don’t want to follow people on Twitter that only tweet ads for their ventures. I would MUCH rather know what some random drummer in Richmond had for lunch (hummus sandwich that sounded pretty good) than know for 18th time this week that so and so has a new book out. Now, I don’t mind when people that also offer other interesting things also tweet about their ventures. I’m totally cool with that. I like Facebook and Twitter as ways of keeping in touch with old friends and making new friends, and getting to better know folks I have met on the internet. I like them as ways to develop some rapport with fans and colleagues and potential fans and colleagues. I really don’t like being seen as a link in someone’s free advertising network. Is that so wrong?

I am writing this post to comment on the purchase process. I went to the New Amsterdam website and ordered the physical CD. I have been buying downloads lately, but I guess I thought this would be a good candidate for full resolution hi-fi treatment. So I ordered the CD somewhat disappointed that I would have to wait a couple of days to hear the music, BUT WAIT! The rockin’ New Amsterdam store gives you the downloads as well when you order the physical CD. I know there are other places that do this, and I love them too. I think this is part of the future. I’ll report on the music at some point.

“As a woman of reasonable drive and sanity, I try not to spend too much time on Facebook. I’ll log on weekly to see which friends have a birthday approaching (felicitations, Peter and Lars) or to post an update. And for a while I really liked that Slayers game, Zombies Must Die! But lately I find myself forced to visit the site for an uncomfortable purpose: declining ‘friend requests’ from actors, directors, playwrights and publicists.

Why not just hit ‘accept’? Yes, many of these people are unknown to me, but so are several of the erstwhile classmates I cheerfully agreed to ‘befriend’. And many are known to me and very likable – a category that includes, remarkably, several publicists. But I write for publications with strict codes of ethics – chiefly, the New York Times – and they don’t look too kindly on pals profiling pals. Yet, to friend or not to friend is really a modern gloss on a much older dilemma: what is the appropriate relationship between the artist and the critic?”

This is an interesting dilemma. I am getting to the point that I don’t necessarily see a Facebook Friend Request so much as a request to be my “friend” as much as a request to have approved communication. More and more I am finding people that have my email address, and phone number, and mailing address (it’s all on my website) using Facebook (or MySpace) messages to contact me. The addition of another layer of technology is mildly annoying, but it seems to be a somewhat necessary annoyance. Apparently this is how people want to communicate, and if I want to be accessible, I need to be accessible there.

Thoughts? Leave a comment, or email me…or friend me so we can message each other.

Check out the artist’s response to the issue. It makes me like Nels and the Crypto gang even more.

Brilliant! (sipping Guinness whilst piano falls on my head)

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I am pleased to announce that my new CD, “Similar in the Opposite Way,” is officially released today. The quartet will perform at Snug Harbor, in New Orleans, on Thursday (1/29) in celebration of this fact. This link: http://jeffalbert.com/?p=177 will take you to the page on my website where you can read about it, and listen to samples, as well as order it. I think my website or the label site (www.forasound.com) probably have the best prices on physical product, and I definitely get the largest cut of it that way. It is also available in physical version from CD Baby or Amazon, and in digital version from iTunes, CD Baby and Amazon. I’ll paste direct links below this.

Thanks for listening, and purchasing (if you do so.)

Peace,
Jeff

http://cdbaby.com/cd/jeffalbert2
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001J8AB38/ref=dm_sp_alb?ie=UTF8&qid=1230331565&sr=8-4
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?i=292294922&id=292294847&s=143441 (iTunes direct link)

blog | analogindustries.com

(Via Bagatellen.)

“THE SEX & CASH THEORY: ‘The creative person basically has two kinds of jobs: One is the sexy, creative kind. Second is the kind that pays the bills. Sometimes the task in hand covers both bases, but not often. This tense duality will always play center stage. It will never be transcended.'”

The art/commerce intersection was bouncing about in my brain last night, so this hit home today. Click the link above and read the whole thing.

(Via @sivers.)

What’s the deal with…?

Did you ever wonder why, cell phone companies don’t try to actually do what their customers want, instead of making their customers do what they want? Why do we put up with this lousy service?

I want to get my stepson a new cell phone. He has some money, and is willing to pay for it. The problem is, that his line isn’t eligible for an upgrade yet. They guy tells me that I can add the new equipment on my line, then he can change it to the other line, and I can go through the whole setup thing again on the phone that I have now, on the line I have now. WTF? Either way they are getting me to commit to two more years of abuse with extortion payment as the only way out. Why can’t they just do it the easy way? Why do I have to jump through hoops for their stupid rules?

I thought capitalism was supposed to create a better scene for consumers. Why do we let it work the other way? It makes me consider dropping off the grid…

I don’t like it when they shoot on the street in front of my gig, without telling us that they will be sporadically closing the street and sidewalks throughout most of the first set. It is hard enough to get people to come out on a foggy Tuesday night to hear non-mainstream music, but the dude with the headset at the corner telling people that they can’t walk down the street makes it damn near impossible. This isn’t hard to fix. If they had just let us know ahead of time, we could have hit our email lists with the fact the the street would be closed for a few minutes at a time, throughout the evening. Knowing that a movie was shooting may have even helped bring people out, if they could have known that it would be possible to get there.

Movie folks can sometimes act like the world revolves around them. These people were fairly cool, but still, there are more people in the world than just the ones that care about their movie.

The doubly maddening thing about all of this is the fact that the presence of the movie shoots in New Orleans is, in itself, a sign of the world’s lack of respect for us as professionals. (I say “us” meaning the city in general.) The only reason that these films are being shot here is that they can pay New Orleanians less than they pay people in LA (or wherever else) to do the same work.

Sometimes we allow ourselves to get what we deserve.

Atlantic Records Says Digital Sales Surpass CDs – NYTimes.com: “Atlantic, a unit of Warner Music Group, says it has reached a milestone that no other major record label has hit: more than half of its music sales in the United States are now from digital products, like downloads on iTunes and ring tones for cellphones.”

I recently got copies of Mike’s two forthcoming CDs, and will have more to say about that soon.

Chicago Reader | Pitchfork Music Festival coverage: Mike Reed’s best known as the guy who assembles the Pitchfork Festival, but in his spare time he performs miracles for the local jazz scene. By Peter Margasak

The downside is that sometimes you might get interrupted by your kids telling you that the cat threw up on the couch and Jessica accidentally sat in it.

Jazz Beyond Jazz: Musicians dread words: “Publicist Blake Zidell, no stranger to the particularities of musicians, presenters, freelance critics and others on the New York City scene, was apologetic. “Maybe you’ve run into this before with him: John is happy to extend press tickets to you tonight, as long as you don’t write about it.””

Richard Kamins | See! Hear!: Mr. Miscellany:

“One thing to keep in mind as the New Year arrives, the creative arts have a tough time surviving without support. That does not mean one has to buy every CD or DVD or book that’s released but really the creative arts needs an audience. … Musicians, poets, performers, as well as directors, authors and set designers need feedback (and not just good or bad reviews in the papers or on blogs.) Applause is important, box office earnings help a lot, yet there’s nothing like stepping out on stage and seeing people in the seats.”

The BoX3 CD, “prototype” has arrived. Hear samples and buy it here:BoX3 – prototype

It is a hand numbered limited run of 200 copies.