8Sided Blog

the scene celebrates itself

Hitting the Links: Paper Synths, The Velvet Underground, and Cuban Numbers Stations

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Perhaps a budding Sunday tradition? Once again, I present five online articles that caught my fancy over the past week:

Meet The World’s Most Obsessive Fan Of ‘The Velvet Underground and Nico’

Satlof’s collection began in earnest in 1987: a $90 autographed copy from “a record dealer in an antiques mall on Canal Street,” with a scrawled signature that the seller said was Warhol’s, but turned out to be Reed’s. Satlof casually picked up more of the albums over the years, paying “$10, $20, like $100 for ones with the full banana.” He stresses that his hobby is due to the brilliance of the music and his love for it. But really: 800 copies?



Miniature Analogue Papercraft Synthesizers by Dan McPharlin

Each miniature synthesizer is meticulously handcrafted from framing matboard, cardboard, paper, plastic sheeting, string and rubber bands. Rather than replicating the existing machines, the focus was more about creating a revisionist history where analogue technology continued to flourish uninterrupted.



In Pictures: The 10 Most Stunning Places to Make Music

Some of the best making-of-the-album stories are those where a wild, remote or inspiring location becomes a powerful inspiration on the music-making – The Rolling Stones at the Cote D’Azur mansion Villa Nellcôte for Exile on Main St.; Can at Schloss Nörvenich for Tago Mago; Killing Joke inside one of the Great Pyramids at Giza. In those cases, the band brought their own recording equipment with them. For the less intrepid, the world has many ready-made, custom-built, luxurious studios in gorgeous locations to fire up creativity.



Cuba’s Mysterious Numbers Station Is Still On The Air

While evidence suggests HM01 is operated by the Cuban government, it’s virtually impossible to tell who it’s sending to, which is one of the main tactical advantages of numbers stations: You can easily see the intended recipient of an email, but you can’t prove someone listened to a radio broadcast unless you catch them in the act.



The Word-Of-Mouth Resurgence of Arthur Russell

Shortly before his death, Russell and his family took a small boat out to Baker Island, a flat rock half-covered by seaweed, four miles off the coast of Maine. The musician sat on a slab of granite and recorded the sound of the waves breaking against the shore. The next year, the Russells scattered his ashes from the same rock, and they watched as the waves slowly pulled him away. On summer nights, for decades, unbeknownst to Russell or his family, locals have boated out to this same rock. They play music, and move together under moonlight. They call the place the Dance Floor.

Ninja Tune’s Peter Quicke: “Spotify is our Biggest Revenue Source”

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[PIAS]’s The Independent Echo blog regularly posts wonderful and informative interviews with various record label managers. The latest features Ninja Tune‘s Peter Quicke who has been managing that label for 25 years. It’s always interesting to hear the perspective of a label that once made its bacon through vinyl and CD sales, now that we are well on our way into the streaming age. Says Quicke:

Spotify is our biggest revenue source. Would it be better if streaming never existed and we carried on selling vinyl and CD? I don’t know. In a way, the reverence for the artifact is tied up with the emotions of the music. Streaming is gradually breaking that down – people’s relationship with music is possibly becoming more incidental and less involved and emotional. But on the other hand, it makes it possible for people to listen to music all the time.



{Spotify feels} like an honest broker paying a fair royalty. But the other thing they’re doing is making the long-tail thinner and probably making the pool of music that gets listened to thinner. That’s not a good thing. It’s the tyranny of choice. People don’t know what to listen to so they listen to the Spotify playlists. From our point of view it’s fine [with a large catalogue], although we’re always learning what works and what you have to be careful of. Whether culturally it’s good long-term is an interesting debate.



It probably is harder now {to start a successful label}. But when I started doing this, for years I worked all day and all night, and it was fucking hard. Nobody wanted to review our records. There were a few fans, but nobody cared. We sold 2,000 or 3,000 at best. It’s hard whenever you start a record label. In a way it’s easier now because you don’t have to spend loads of time fretting over manufacturing. Starting a label at any time in history is just shit-tonnes of work for years.



Be sure to read the full interview HERE.

About Charts and the Disparity of Pop Music

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This morning on our Slack channel (message me if you might want in) I was having a discussion with Jon Curtis, newly responsible for the wonderful blog A Poke in the Ear (With a Sharp Stick). Jon posted an article about the apparent inevitability of Spotify windowing out big new releases from their free tier. I commented that this might somewhat curtail the recent phenomenon of multiple songs from a single album release simultaneously filling up the pop charts, now that streaming numbers affect position. I shared a link to an article in The Guardian about Ed Sheeran doing just that, with 16 album tracks in the UK top 20.

Jon Curtis:

The takeaway: “The problem isn’t so much the charts as what streaming is doing to music itself. The vast gap between pop’s behemoths and everyone else is a problem that the medium only compounds.” The charts were always about popularity … initially number of products sold, now number of products streamed. This skews the playing field dramatically. And, like most questions that are posed in online headers {in this case: “Can the charts be fixed?”}, the answer is no, they can’t be fixed.



My response:

I don’t know if I agree with the quote. I think the disparity of ‘pop behemoths’ vs. the second tier is reflective of such growing (and troubling) disparity overall in our society, and there are other factors unique to our time – such as rampant media consolidation and the fact that there are now three ‘major labels’ – mainly to blame. But, on the flip-side, there are now more people making a living in creative fields due to the democratizing effect of the internet (which includes streaming) then there ever were. The most disappointed are those feeling they’ve been cheated out of their Led Zeppelin-style private jet because it’s not like it was in 1975 (spoiler: it wasn’t like that actually).



Regarding charts: I managed a major retail store during the introduction of Soundscan and saw firsthand how that stuff was gamed. But now that we’ve got a million easy-to-access niches (and many self-released artists making a reasonable, lower middle class living off music streaming and such) things like ‘charts’ are even less relevant. I think the Ed Sheeran bit above is hilarious, and it’s fine with me. If that’s how they want to set the metric for their charts then so be it … all this does is send true music fans away from traditional outlets (charts, corporate radio, etc) and into avenues of discovery.



I also admitted that even I’m strangely fascinated by my recurring mix of optimism and cynicism.

The Tale of Vulfpeck’s Silent Album

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Today I Found Out just posted a video detailing Sleepify, that fascinating crowdfunding ploy by Michigan band Vulfpeck:

An important bit that’s mentioned in passing is that Vulfpeck encouraged sleeping fans to play the silent album on repeat overnight (thus, Sleepify) to add to the playcount coffer. Though this tactic was initially creative and effective (really, hats off to ’em), I do think Spotify were justified in putting a stop to the potential trend of ‘silent album’. There would certainly be hundreds of uninspired copycat ‘silent albums’ with a sole money-making purpose if this was tolerated (Spotify’s already dealing with new ridicule for a preponderance of “karaoke versions” and the like mucking up the works).

I also think it’s unfair to compare Sleepify to John Cage’s “4’33″” as Cage’s purpose in ‘writing’ that piece wasn’t to raise funds for a tour. But, I’ll go one further and say that “4’33″” shouldn’t be on Spotify either … it only truly resonates when performed live:

Road Maps, Rainy Days, and Digital Streaming

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Spotify, Waze, and road trips, via Endgadget:

Drivers use their smartphone for both navigation and music, so why not put the two together? Waze and Spotify have announced that they’ve done just that: You can now navigate with Waze within Spotify and access Spotify playlists from Waze. After you set up a playlist, it’ll automatically play when you start your journey, while letting you “easily” change songs. At the same time, you can browse playlists (and switch from one app to the other) when your vehicle is at a full stop.



The partnership is somewhat surprising, as Waze is owned by Google, which has its own Play music-streaming service that competes with Spotify. However, Spotify’s 50 million-strong subscriber base dwarfs Google Play (and every other music service), so it could be a way for Google to prod all those users into trying the Waze platform.



Spotify, The North Face, and rain, via The Verge:

The Austin-based band White Denim has a new song out today, but you can only listen to it if it’s raining where you are. The North Face is releasing the track, called “No Nee Ta Slode Aln” as part of a partnership with Spotify. The whole thing is a gimmicky way to sell a rain jacket.



The streaming service is using geo-targeting to make the song available only in areas of the United States experiencing drops of water falling from the sky. If that’s not happening in your area, you’re out of luck. It’s currently not raining where I am, which means the song isn’t showing up on my Spotify.



Just as digital streaming has opened up endless options for defining a ‘release’ or an ‘album’, we’re now starting to see this creative freedom applied to music promotion and integration. More of this, I say.

Pandora Premium Takes the Service On-Demand

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As we’re talking a little about Pandora, I would be remiss to not mention the company’s long-awaited foray into on-demand streaming is launching this week …

Fast Company:

The idea of launching a new music subscription service in 2017 would be utterly insane if it weren’t for one detail: Pandora already has 78 million monthly active listeners. If the company has a shot at competing, it will come primarily from its ability to upsell some of these listeners to its new $10 subscription tier. The rollout of Pandora Premium will be iterative and targeted. It begins this week and will continue through mid-April in phases, selectively coaxing existing Pandora users that might be likely to sign up based on their listening activity. People who hit the song-skipping limit or frequently thumb-up songs by the same artist, for instance, are prime targets for the new service.



Pandora is peddling a very polished, well-designed product, but it’s unlikely to reel in many people who are already committed to a service like Spotify or Apple Music. That’s because there’s very little here, aside from aesthetics and a legacy of smart music curation, that can’t be found on other services. Even perks like personalized new releases and the “add similar songs” button found their way into Spotify in the time that’s passed since Pandora acquired Rdio. Unfortunately for Pandora, Spotify has vastly improved its own curation and discovery features over the last year and a half. Pandora Premium is solid, but if you’re already invested in another service, you’re likely to find enough here to



Macworld on what, if anything, sets this service apart from the others:

Pandora Premium offers automated playlist generation: You choose one or two songs and the service creates a full playlist based on their properties. Other services have similar features. Apple’s iTunes Genius, for example, automatically creates playlists from a user’s personal playlist. The advantage for Pandora, however, is that its ability to match songs is widely considered superior to what other services can do {due to the company’s long involvement in the Music Genome Project -ed}.



The company is also very proud of Premium’s search capabilities and even managed to throw some shade at other services when discussing it. “Pandora’s team of curators, music analysts and data scientists have sifted through tens of millions of tracks to help you quickly find what you really want,” Pandora said in its announcement. “No more wading through covers, karaoke versions or tribute tracks to get to your favorite tune.” Spotify’s vast catalog includes numerous karaoke, cover, and tribute tracks that often come up in a search before the song by the original artist.



Update: Jim Dalrymple over at The Loop is optimistic about Pandora’s offering, citing a focus on catering to the listener as the key to making it a potential improvement over other services.

SoundCloud Headed for the Cut-Out Bin?

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Recode:

Sources say {SoundCloud} has been trying to raise more than $100 million since last summer, without success. It has also talked to potential acquirers, including Spotify, without closing a deal.



The upshot, according to people familiar with the company: SoundCloud is now at a point where it may sell for less than the $700 million investors thought it was worth a few years ago. One source thinks it will consider bids, as long as they’re above the total investment it has raised to date — about $250 million.



SoundCloud’s struggle is taking place while there’s renewed investor interest in streaming music. Even though the industry’s economics are challenging, users have embraced streaming, and are even willing to pay for it: Spotify, which would like to go public next year, says it has more than 50 million paid subscribers worldwide. Apple Music says it has more than 20 million paid subs. {SoundCloud} says it has 175 million monthly unique users, but it hasn’t updated that number since 2014.



With Pandora experiencing similar woes, it would seem that a tech company wanting to enter the music landscape could make a big splash by acquiring both SoundCloud and Pandora at a good price and combining their users. Maybe one of these will be interested?



Update: SoundCloud forges ahead … this just in from Hypebot:

Beginning today, SoundCloud is inviting DJs and producers who create sets, remixes and other forms of creative works to join its Premier program to earn revenue for the tracks they share on SoundCloud.



Premier creators can monetize their content and earn a portion of the revenue generated by subscriptions and advertising on SoundCloud. Acceptance is still “invite only,” but you can apply here.



SoundCloud has not shared how many artists are Premier members, its criteria for acceptance, or how revenue is shared with creators.

A Twelve-Hour History of Spiritual Jazz

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A high contrast black and white photograph of John and Alice Coltrane. John is holding his saxophone and appears deep in thought.

Courtesy of NTS Radio, here’s a four-part / twelve-hour overview of ‘spiritual jazz’ that will be on repeat in this office for a while:

Pitchfork:

During the tumultuous ’60s, there was a religious revolution to accompany the grand societal, sexual, racial, and cultural shifts already afoot. Concurrently, the era’s primary African-American art form reflected such upheaval in its music, too: Jazz began to push against all constraints, be it chord changes, predetermined tempos, or melodies, so as to best reflect the pursuit of freedom in all of its forms. Rather than the Tin Pan Alley standards, modal explorations, and cool poses that previously defined the genre, there was now chaos, noise, and tumult to be found. And amid the disorder out on the street and on the bandstand was also a quest for a spiritual center, a search for communion with the divine.

This musical exploration was epitomized by tenor saxophonist John Coltrane, whose 1965 album A Love Supreme was conceived as “a humble offering to Him, an attempt to say ‘THANK YOU GOD’ through our work.” Coltrane soon began to break through the boundaries of jazz even further on albums like OM, Meditations, and especially 1966’s Ascension, which featured a collective improvisation by an 11-piece band that included many leading luminaries of what would be called “The New Thing” in jazz.

In that record’s wake, there arose a crop of jazz artists who strove for the transcendent in their work. Some embraced the sacred sound of the Southern Baptist church in all its ecstatic shouts and yells, while others envisioned a Pan-African sound or sought enlightenment from Southeastern Asian esoteric practices like transcendental meditation and yoga.

Hitting the Links: Grace Jones, Italian Futurists, and the Radical Politics of Love

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For your weekend, I present five intriguing missives from across the digital cosmos:

Stevie Wonder and the Radical Politics of Love

Here are three songs, from three albums recorded in three consecutive years, all from the Nixon era. Each year, the lyrics get more pointed, more obvious in their contempt. But it’s a contempt mingled with understanding, and grounded in a deep, deep love for the people most affected by political failure.



Brian Eno’s Latest Isn’t An Album – It’s A Process

The price point corroborates that, asking for the worth not of an album but of a piece of software. But even then, it poses challenges. We expect a certain amount of utility for our buck; I own one other app that costs $40, for example, and it is a cloud-based productivity suite, which is about as utilitarian as it gets. You don’t do anything with Reflection, and it doesn’t do anything for you. What sort of software is that?



Partying With Grace Jones

On May 19, 1978, Jamaican-born model and singer Grace Jones turned 30. On June 7, she released her second studio album, Fame. Five days later, she celebrated with a combination birthday/album release extravaganza at LaFarfelle Disco in New York. The fun and debauchery were captured on film by notorious paparazzo Ron Galella, who was famous in his own way for relentlessly pursuing celebrities and getting his teeth knocked out by Marlon Brando.



20 Dynamic Paintings From The Italian Futurists

Italian writer Filippo Tommaso Marinetti founded Futurism when he published his Futurist Manifesto in Parisian newspaper Le Figaro on 20th February 1909. Futurism was a key artistic and social development in 20th Century art history, originating and most active within Italy, but also a movement whose ideas spread to Russia, England and beyond.



Stop Saying ‘I Feel Like’

This is what is most disturbing about “I feel like”: The phrase cripples our range of expression and flattens the complex role that emotions do play in our reasoning. It turns emotion into a cudgel that smashes the distinction — and even in our relativistic age, there remains a distinction — between evidence out in the world and internal sentiments known only to each of us.

Mechanical Royalty Rates Revisited

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America’s Copyright Royalty Board yesterday got around to thinking about what the country’s mechanical royalty rates should be for the next five years.

Mechanical royalties – paid to songwriters when recordings of their songs are copied and distributed – are covered by a compulsory license Stateside. Which means songwriters and music publishers are obliged to license third parties making and distributing those copies at a statutory rate, so that rate-setting processes like this one are rather important.

Traditionally the main customers of mechanical rights have been record companies, which need a license from the relevant songwriter or music publisher every time they press a CD.

In the US, unlike in Europe, it was the label which paid the mechanical royalties on downloads too, so that iTunes didn’t have to worry about making sure the owner of the song copyright was paid their share of any income.

However with streams, where both the mechanical and performing rights of the copyright are exploited, it is the digital platform that is the licensee and which therefore pays the mechanical royalties directly to the writer or publisher (or not as the case may be, as those songwriter lawsuits against various streaming services have demonstrated).

Discs and downloads also remain a decent part of the recorded music business for now of course, but – after a bit of a stand off – the US record industry reached a deal with the music publishers on mechanical royalty rates last year. Which means that the CRB hearing is very much focused on the rates paid by the streaming services, which are, after all, where all the growth is in recorded music these days.

The tech giants are expected to argue to reduce the amount they pay, while the National Music Publisher’s Association and the Nashville Songwriters Association International will lobby for an increase.

NMPA wants songwriters to be paid each time their song is played, or each time a user purchases a subscription. It also wants to share the profits from the sale of technology and subscriptions that include access to music.

The US government has been setting mechanical royalty rates for over 100 years, beginning in 1909 when Congress determined that the rights would be subject to a compulsory license. This means that anyone can record a songwriter’s work for a fixed rate without permission or approval. Congress used to set this rate, but has since delegated the task to the CRB judges. The current rates were set over ten years ago when digital streaming was just starting to take off.