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The Seven Book Challenge
You’ve probably seen this floating around on social media: “Post seven books you love, one book per day, no explanations, no reviews, just covers. Each day you will ask a friend to take up the challenge.” I was challenged before and participated on Twitter. Since then I’ve been challenged a few more times, so I thought I’d make it into a blog post. Here are my seven books:
I do want to give a quick explanation. Yes, these are books I love, but I also chose the books that had the most significant impact. I read most of these as a teenager or in my early 20s. All of these books changed the way I looked at the world in some way. Someone (I can’t find the reference) called these types of books ‘earthquake books’ because they shake your foundation. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend them all — I bet the Industrial Culture Handbook hasn’t aged well — but these books perfectly lined up with my age and what I was pondering at the time. These books are a window into what shaped me.
And books continue to shape. I was an avid reader the first 25 years of my life, but let it go as my eyesight worsened.1 I suffer from an eye condition called keratoconus. And I never warmed up to audiobooks — I don’t retain information through listening as I do with reading. About three years ago, thanks to improvements in available contact lenses and apps like Marvin for the iPad, I picked up the habit again. It wasn’t easy to get back on the book train — out of practice, I was a slow reader at first — but now I’m catching up on all the recommendations I’ve gathered over the years.
The seven books above are quite different than what I read now, but make sense in context. Presently I’m finishing Ted Chiang’s Stories of Your Life and Others and Ryan Holiday’s new one, Stillness Is The Key, is on deck. I update my recent reads in this blog’s /now section.
Speaking of Ryan Holiday, his article How To Read More — A Lot More is a classic. It helped inspire me when I started reading again and was frustrated by my slow speed.
And check out the podcast 3 Books, which is all about impactful books. Ryan Holiday is the guest on a recent episode. And Seth Godin was a guest a while back — I’ve heard Seth on a lot of podcasts, and this is my favorite of all his appearances.
PS – Oh, right — I’m supposed to challenge someone in return. I challenge you. Please reveal a book that impacted your life in the comments. I need new recommendations!
PPS – I’ll be attending MondoNYC in New York this Thursday and Friday. If you plan to be there, too, hit me up.
Energy Fools the Magician
I ran across this delightful short film from 2008 promoting the Brian Eno/David Byrne collaboration Everything That Happens Will Happen Today:
From the video, a good quote from Byrne:
Adding little bits or changing your expectations is what keeps music really interesting. Because when you listen to music you can generally tell what’s coming, but then when you get surprised by what actually does come then — if it’s not too surprising — it’s kind of pleasurable.
I appreciate the caveat “not too surprising!” But, yes, unexpected elements are often responsible for pushing a song into the ‘special’ zone. These elements can be lyrical, a change of chords or dynamics, unannounced instrumentation, or anything else that comes to mind. And they don’t have to be in-your-face — subtlety is powerful.
The bass line in The Feelies’ “Slow Down” comes to mind. After playing one note for 2:19 of the song the bass unexpectedly switches to a second note. On paper, this seems insignificant, but in the context of the song, it’s a special moment. I get those song tingles everything I hear it — one of my favorite musical subtleties.
You can see Brian Eno reacting to the unexpected elements placed within Everything That Happens Will Happen Today. Check him out at 6:05. It’s fun and reassuring to see Eno get excited about the music he’s worked on, especially after all these years. He seems self-aware of his enthusiasm a few seconds later, pulling back a bit.
And then check out Eno at 6:50. What a riot. I asked Twitter to make a GIF for me, and David Wahl came through with this piece of magic:
One last note (and timestamp) on this video. If the amount of clutter in your home studio has you feeling down check out (what I assume is) David Byrne’s workspace at 4:23. The ‘80s Trimline telephone is a nice touch.
An Interview With Sync-Club Podcast
Listen to “Rolling the Dice with Michael Donaldson | 001” on Spreaker.
Steven Cleveland — of the electronic band Ping Trace who I’ve worked with — has started a podcast titled Sync-Club. As I understand it, the podcast is Steven’s journey in better understanding the worlds of publishing, licensing, and synchronization with the listener along for the ride. The podcast will feature interviews with professionals working in synch as the knowledge gets dropped. It’s a great concept. The synch world could use some demystification from a learner’s point of view.
I’m honored to help launch this podcast by being the interviewee on the first episode. Steven and I have a fun and informative conversation. I go deep on a variety of licensing-related subjects, and towards the end, I reveal a few tactics for the best ways that an independent artist can reach out to music supervisors.
The podcast conversation is also like a taste of one of my consulting sessions. I cover
One of my favorite riffs concerns how an artist should not overthink the synch market, falling into the trap of creating music that might be ‘great for licensing.’ Music your fans love will end up being the music that supervisors love, so don’t abandon both by writing music to some imagined spec. Here’s a transcription of this riff from the podcast, edited for clarity:
There is a market for creating music specifically with sync in mind, and that’s called library music. And if you want to make library music that’s fine if that’s your prerogative. But if you’re looking for something beyond that, then you still need to create the best music you can for your fans, your audience.
A music supervisor, a showrunner, or a director will want their project to be cool and distinctive. So they’re going to look for cool and distinctive music to match their perception of what the project should be. When you’re making music to spec or to what you think someone is going to want to hear, you’re not making distinctive music. It might sound cool, but it’s not going to be distinctive.
And another issue is I feel like the library music industry is in jeopardy because of AI music. Creating music to spec — for example, songs with glockenspiels and handclaps with the lyrics, “you can do it!” — is intentionally generic. But people make songs like these because they’re the kind of songs used in a lot of videos. It’s a race to the bottom, and nothing is going to be closer to the bottom and able to do spec better than a computer in two or three years.
I feel bad for people that are making a living in the library music industry because I think they’re the ones who are going to be hurt by this. But on the other hand, artists and bands with distinctive sounds and sticky stories — a story behind the band and who they are and what they’re about — are going to stand out in the synch world. Those kinds of bands may even see an increase in the money they’re making from synch as the field of distinctive, story-driven artists will actually narrow in a crowded marketplace.
You also have to think in terms of who music supervisors are when you’re pitching music. You have to put yourself in their shoes and understand where they come from. Music supervisors are music fans. That’s the reason they got into the profession. I was thinking earlier today about how a lot of newer executives in the record industry are tech people rather than music people. It’s almost like music supervision is the last area that’s entirely populated by music fans, and I don’t see that changing.
Your average music supervisor was in a band once, or they were a DJ on a college radio station or at a nightclub. They might have worked at a label or written about music professionally. When you realize that you better understand how to pitch your music. Music supervisors want to discover bands. They want to support a band that has a story that they connect with. And obviously, they also want a really good song that fits the project. But if you have a compelling story, then you have a greater chance of getting your song to them.
Check out Sync-Club’s website here, and be sure to subscribe to the podcast’s newsletter — and the podcast itself via your favorite listening platform — as I’m sure it will provide a wealth of useful information.
Kraftwerk Sky Dancer
My longtime friend David and his equally creative wife Jennifer strike again. There’s information on the genesis of this impressive feat of Kraftwerk kunstwerk on his blog.
Groove On: How DJs Created the 12″ Single
The other day I wrote about music delivery and formats (CD, LP, streaming) and how these often influence music creation. This latest installment of Vox’s always excellent Earworm series flips this around. The video documents how the 12” single filled the need of ‘70s club DJs requiring songs with more time to groove and at higher fidelity than a 7” or LP track could deliver.
Here are a few quick thoughts on the video:
- People tend to forget how long disco — and club culture — was an active underground movement before its mainstream overload. Some of the early dates in the video may surprise some. And though not strictly ‘disco,’ David Mancuso’s first Loft party was in 1970, as an early benchmark.
- Can we note how cool it is that some contemporary DJs like Questlove and Orlando’s DJ BMF often go back to playing 7” vinyl sets, just as Nicky Siano once did? Not only is this throwback an homage and a connector to the past, but I think one becomes a better DJ — learning techniques to apply to modern digital methods — by stripping the practice down to its roots.
- Paul Morley, appearing in the video, has a place in 12” history not mentioned in the piece. He was a co-founder — alongside Trevor Horn — of ZTT Records and an original Art Of Noise member. Morley’s input was mainly in the label’s image, branding, and writing the grandiose label copy and manifestos that accompanied each release, but he certainly had a say in the label’s groundbreaking music direction. One element of that direction: ZTT 12” mixes weren’t merely extended versions. These were complete reworks of the original songs, with new instrumentation, drum tracks, and even extra vocals. This type of remixing is normal in dance music now — a simple extended version is a rarity — but, in ZTT’s time, it was a radical technique. I’m not sure if any label was doing these types of remixes before ZTT. My favorite ZTT rework/remix? This one for Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s “Rage Hard” which takes the listener on a tour of the “strange world of the 12”.”
- I would have loved to have heard “I Feel Love” for the first time with fresh, unprepared 1977 ears. Brian Eno’s initial reaction was probably shared by many.
The ARChive is a Necessity in the Digital World
Richard Morgan in Rolling Stone:
The [Archive of Contemporary Music] is a massive private research library that has been in downtown Manhattan since 1985 … […] Far from the kind of crackpot hoarding that sometimes happens in cities, George’s archive has been supported by powerhouses in music and entertainment. It houses Keith Richards’ blues collection. Their current board is varied enough to include both Youssou N’Dour and Paul Simon (Lou Reed and David Bowie were both once members). It consulted for Tom Hanks on the making of That Thing You Do. It’s the go-to repository for album art for everything from Grammy exhibits to Taschen books.
In a quirky explainer on their site about how they are ready for an alien invasion, the archive notes: “The ARChive collects and preserves everything that’s issued, hoping to define ‘what happened’ in terms broader than those usually described by selectiveness or availability. Taste, quality, marketing, Halls of Fame, sales, starsand value are as alien to us as they are, well, to aliens.” […]
At a time when some in the city were scrubbing Keith Haring murals off subway platforms, [founder Bob] George was welcoming every genre, including then-unpopular punk and hip-hop (among the archive’s greatest collection is a trove of punk 45s). “We could make the good and goofy come alive,” he says, “because no museum or university library is going to do that. They only want things after they’ve gotten valuable. It’s a small view of value. We see things differently. We see the value in everything.”
I almost wrote that The ARChive is like a musical version of the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. Then I caught myself, realizing the absurdity of instinctively going to an internet-related analogy to describe something classic and rooted in our physical history. That may underlie the problem here — that we devalue the importance of a permanent IRL archive of our artistic triumphs now that the online world seems ubiquitous and deceivingly tangible.
And that problem? The ARChive is in danger of losing the space it has occupied since 1985 due to dramatic rent increases in its TriBeCa (NYC) home. This important collection of music (over three million recordings, whoa), and a building modified and renovated to house the vintage media safely can’t just pick up and find another home, especially in the city. So Bob George and friends of The ARChive are asking for help from music lovers worldwide, via a GoFundMe campaign.
From the GoFundMe page:
Our Independence is important to us. We operate without any City, State or Federal funds. We cherish the ability to work on projects of choice and free from restrictions or the dependence on governmental/taxpayer support. Our once affordable rent on White Street has skyrocketed to $21,000 a month, making it increasingly difficult for a pure research organization to survive in Lower Manhattan. Our home is in New York and we would love to stay here.
Independent historical archives like these are becoming ever important in our digital world, as emphasized by some recent mishaps and decisions of corporate content overseers. We exist in that tricky time-space when physical artifacts are still a part of our lives, but digital replicas are slowly taking over. On a personal scale, I think it’s fine to eschew material collections for digital ones if that’s your inclination. But that can fool us into forgetting that an archive like The ARChive is a cultural necessity, just like that seed vault in Norway is essential. If the digital replicas are lost — which could happen — then it’s institutions like The ARChive that help us relocate our scattered artistic history.
Donate to the Archive of Contemporary Music’s GoFundMe campaign, even if just a little bit. I did. And h/t to Eric Johnson (DJ Bunny Ears) for alerting me to The ARChive’s plight.
🔗→ Rebuilding the ARC: America’s Largest Music Collection Needs Your Help
🔗→ Rebuilding the ARC
An Amazing BBC ‘Bootleg Report’ from 1971
I previously wrote about bootleg culture in the age of streaming and reminisced on the simple days of CD bootlegs sold in my own record shop. Now my pal Kenn Richards — via his essential Research {Curation} Reduction newsletter — alerted me to this 14-minute BBC documentary from 1971 examining the bootleg scene in London at the time. Holy cats, this is wonderful.
The video features incredible quotes and contributions from Led Zeppelin manager Peter ‘no one heavier than me’ Grant, ‘The’ Pink Floyd, Yoko Ono, and John Lennon who prefers to be in a bag. Also, it’s so quaint how the guy who manufactures bootlegs and the other guy who sells them (at a Virgin Records, no less)
Here’s some bonus content from the same year: Neil Young discovering bootlegs of his own work in a Los Angeles record store. Watch the guy behind the counter — his uncomfortable body language as Young starts flipping through the bins is priceless.
The Counterintuitive Environmental Cost of Digital Streaming
File this story under ‘This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things,’ via Billboard:
Published on Monday (April 8), the research — a collaboration between the University of Glasgow and the University of Oslo –found that despite a sharp drop in the use of plastics in music production over the last two decades, the “storing and transmitting” of digital music files has actually led to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) by the industry.
“These figures seem to confirm the widespread notion that music digitalised is music dematerialised,” said University of Oslo Associate Professor and lead researcher Dr. Kyle Devine in a statement, referencing statistics citing the decrease in plastics use since the year 2000. “The figures may even suggest that the rises of downloading and streaming are making music more environmentally friendly. But a very different picture emerges when we think about the energy used to power online music listening. Storing and processing music online uses a tremendous amount of resources and energy — which [have] a high impact on the environment.”
More parade-raining from the original report in The Conversation:
Obviously this is not the last word on the matter. To truly compare past and present, if it were even possible, you would have to factor in the emissions involved in making the devices on which we have listened to music in different eras. You would need to look at the fuel burned in distributing LPs or CDs to music stores, plus the costs of distributing music players then and now. There are the emissions from the recording studios and the emissions involved in making the musical instruments used in the recording process. You might even want to compare the emissions in live performances in the past and the present – it starts to look like an almost endless enquiry.
Even if the comparison between different eras ultimately came out looking different, our overriding point would be the same: the price that consumers are willing to pay for listening to recorded music has never been lower than today, yet the hidden environmental impact of that experience is enormous.
I don’t see any mention of the environmental burden of additional landfill created by excess physical media so I wonder if that was a consideration. Regardless, it would seem the solution is not a change in consumption but in the sources and production of energy.
🔗→ Digital Music Consumption Has Led to Increase in Greenhouse Gas Emissions, New Study Finds
🔗→ Music streaming has a far worse carbon footprint than the heyday of records and CDs – new findings
Spotify’s Auto-Play Means Less Royalty For Songwriters
An astute observation by Billboard:
Although songwriters, publishers, or everyday people may not be aware, Spotify — like YouTube — has now moved to a model that auto-plays songs after a user listens to one they selected. […]
On the plus side, what this does is keep listeners engaged on the site, which is a benefit that Spotify likes. And it has the potential to turn listeners on to more music, a benefit that all rights owners, publishers, songwriters, labels and artists should like. And it steers payments to artists and songwriters whose songs weren’t chosen to be played.
But it represents a downside in per-stream payments for songwriters and artists, too. Since the payout pool is divided by streams, the more streams that occur in a month, the further the per-stream payout decreases. In addition to songs that users choose to play, their devices will automatically play other songs after they hear the song they wanted. Who knows how many additional plays accrue due to automation — but it’s safe to say those plays are further diluting the per-stream payout for artists and songwriters whose songs the consumer chooses to play.
I also believe Spotify’s auto-played songs fall under ‘non-interactive streaming’ (AKA ‘internet radio’). This means that mechanical royalty does not apply. So this auto-play feature may partly serve to lessen a user’s amount of ‘interactive’ streams, allowing the platform the decrease its overall royalty pay-out.
Please correct me if I’m wrong. But if I’m right, and you’re a Spotify user, maybe think about turning off the auto-play mechanism in the app’s settings.
🔗→ The CRB Rate Trial Explained: How Publishers, Digital Services Weighed In At The Time