Posts tagged music
I could try to write something eloquent about the madness that is SXSW in Austin, but I have a flight to catch in six hours and this video summarizes the experience perfectly.
This year was the first year I had a photo press pass for OFF Festival, one of my favorite music festivals in Poland (after Unsound, of course). So I took an obscene number of photos, the best of which I’ve gathered here.
Even though I liked some of the other bands more musically (Mew especially), I have to admit that the pure showmanship and fun of The Flaming Lips made it one of the most memorable performances I’ve seen.
Also, taking photos while dodging giant balloons bombarding your head and camera was a new and exciting challenge.
“ But even Lester, who is keen on the idea of getting paid £5 each for the 30 or so new bands he listens to each day, reluctantly has to concede that the site looks “incredibly tacky”. In response to complaints from journalists, the list of publications has replaced a list of individuals. As James Sherry, a rock PR, puts it, having a price next to your name is “really not a good look”. If bands are in desperate need of good PR, perhaps freelance journalists need it even more.”
Website pays music journalists to review bands | Media | The Guardian
Very telling article, but perhaps an even more important part is a comment by the Guardian’s film and music editor:
However, budgets are tight here and I am no longer able to use freelance album reviewers (all our reviewers are either on staff, or have contracts to write for the Guardian). That means I have lost some specialist knowledge - where once I would commission Alex Macpherson to review UK urban and R&B, or Angus Batey to review hip-hop, those options are no longer open to me.
One of the greatest losses to modern journalism is the death of the specialized journalist, now confined to infinite Blogspot fan blogs (in the case of music journalists) or the unemployment office in the rest of the business.
As for the actual subject of the article, this is not the least bit shocking for someone with any experience in the music business. Hype begets hype, and every band is hoping that by some miracle the right influential journo will fall in love with their basement-recorded, CDR masterpiece. But realistically, there’s no chance for that to happen anymore, due to the sheer volume of music being produced every second.
So I don’t blame bands who are turning to this method, as shady as it seems. I do, however, blame the industry for not having a better filtering process in place.
the day the indie music died
I’d really love to analyze the way my musical tastes have changed over the years, similarly to the way I analyzed how my writing changed over the years. Because I’d like to know how I missed the exact day that indie music, something I’d loved for years, began to bore me to the point where I can’t stand it these days.
Not that I haven’t tried. I’ll get on hypem, or listen to some recommendations on last.fm, but nothing on there that can be classified as “indie rock” thrills me anymore. Even newer albums by bands I used to love don’t do it for me at all (see: American Analog Set, Death Cab, Say Hi to Your Mom, Franz Ferdinand). And I can’t even say that because I play in a post-rock band, I’m now stuck in a post-rock bubble, because I barely listen to post-rock as it is - and the stuff I do listen to has very little to do with “rock”.
Granted, I do not keep up with new music nearly as much as I used to in the days I was a music writer. But nonetheless, most of the “bigger” indie bands make it to my ears one way or another, and none of those linger there.
So am I just missing these things? Or are the days of good, original indie rock over? Or have I become more demanding in my musical tastes? I’d really like to know.
priorities
There are two industries that I’m deeply immersed in and that desperately need fixing: the music industry and the newspaper industry.
The music industry is slowly fixing itself, and there is a new generation of artists fluent in the art of online self-promotion (myself included) who are bypassing the old structures. Nonetheless, they still exist, and still hinder real progress.
The newspaper industry is even worse off. Since that’s my current livelyhood, that’s my first priority.
I want to fix the way people get news.
I want to fix the way people think about information.
I want to restore the good names (and good salaries) of journalists.
I want truth and objectivity to return. I want the opinion columns kept to a minimum. Along with that, I want advertising kept to a minimum as well.
Anyway, these are the things in my head. These are the problems I’m thinking about when I’m not earning a living and trying to keep my job, which I’m more and more in danger of losing - not because I’m bad at it, but because the world seems to think it doesn’t need me. I want to prove just how necessary I, and those like me, are.
Some reading:
On the music industry:
On the fall of newspapers:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marty-kaplan/why-americans-hate-journa_b_117104.html
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080721_so_goes_the_newsroom_the_empire_and_the_world/
http://www.azdailysun.com/articles/2008/08/10/news/opinion/guest/20080810_guest_179148.txt
On what I believe is one of the main causes: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google
