BEST. BAND. EVER.

The trouble with having good taste in music

It’s a good day in the history of the internets for my countrymen: Spotify just launched in Australia. Funnily, it was only last night that I tried explaining Spotify to my 15-year-old sister in Melbourne. The best I could manage:

It’s like having all the songs in the world, but you don’t need to download them!

Note: She seemed excited.

My first inclination that the Swedish-built music/tech giant had begun its invasion of Down Under’s shores came from this email explosion:

A quick Twitter search - and this tweet from Lexy Savvides - confirmed my suspicion.

And therein lies the biggest problem for Spotify: people by-and-large have terrible taste in music. They say things like:

• ‘I love all kinds of music!’
• ‘I just love whatever’s playing on the radio!’
• ‘Dave Matthews is a genius!’

For the mainstream - of which the wonderful Lexy does not belong to - they’ll never see this problem. For them, Spotify is a treasure trove of all the songs they already love, mixed in with multitudes they’ll never hear.

Lexy’s description of Facebook/Spotify experience was echoed by many in the days following last year’s f8 conference, in which The Zuck first introduced ‘frictionless sharing’ a.k.a. THE WORST NIGHTMARE OF EVERYONE WITH GOOD TASTE IN MUSIC.

Remember the Prom Queen you keep as a friend for the joy of a cheap perv every-now-and-then? Yep, she loves P!nk. 

Oh, and what about the guy who was the best football player in your grade? Yep, he fucking cannot get enough of Bon Jovi’s Greatest Hits.

Amongst all the horror, there are bright spots.

I’m always in awe of good friend Ryan O’Sullivan. A man of many talents, Ryan boasts one of the most impressive album collections on the planet - and has superlative taste in music.

Within moments of Ryan coming to grips with Spotify, he’s already created a playlist for the stupendous new Beach House record Bloom, and likened them to a latter-day Cocteau Twins.

In Ryan’s instance, he’s gone out of his way to engage in a WHOLE BUNCH OF FRICTION (take that, Zuck!):

1. Have good taste in music

2. Create playlist

3. Share playlist to Facebook

4. Add comment to contextualize the share

5. Be prepared to reply to comment with additional insight

Music fans with great taste need a new platform full of friction. It’ll keep the riff raff away and making us seem like complex, insightful, tastemakers (which, of course, we’re not…. but don’t tell anyone. OK?)

Friction should be the new hallmark of online music sharing for those with good taste. Listening data and auto-syndication to social media does not maketh the music snob.

Your fans could work for you (literally)

Of late, I’ve been devoting an inordinate amount of time looking at the digital presence of bands big and small - especially official sites. From Katy Perry to Justin Beiber, and Bon Iver to Arcade Fire, the litany of online offences grows longer with each click:

• Splash pages
• Flash-heavy sites
• Autoplay audio
• E-commerce as an afterthought
• Impossibly hidden / nonexistent email signup
• Outdated content

Getting into all these problems would require a BOTTLE OF VALIUM TO GORGE ON. For the sake of my sanity, let’s focus only on the last of the issues raised - outdated content.

Having spent the better part of a decade producing online content (news, editorial and  marketing campaigns), the power of fresh, interesting and relevant content to draw back your audience never ceases to amaze me.

After an interview with Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan at SXSW, marketer Brian Solis surmised the curmudgeonly grunge rocker’s thoughts on the issue:

Artists and fans must assume responsibility for the future of music if it is to mean something more than viral videos and hit singles. This is about engagement. This is about sustained relevance.

Billy is correct: one-hit viral videos will not make a career. At a time when the collective attention span is growing more infinitesimal by the day, consistent dialogue with fans is needed. Facebook and Twitter are good allies in this battle, but alone they are not enough.

It seems like the music business at large has completely lost interest in creating engaging, thoughtful websites. And Heaven forbid they’d gear these sites towards e-commerce. Oh that’s right, it’s still 1985 and we’re all making money hand over fist ://///

Even simple things can go awry: I was blown away to find that Canadian buzz-queen Grimes’ much-hyped new music video for Nightmusic (now at 320K+ views on YouTube) is not yet promoted on her official site. C’mon guys, changing the embed code on that page should take less than 60 seconds.

This got me thinking: if the labels/managers aren’t able to give their artists’ sites enough love, who will?

The answer came to me amidst the sadness of learning about MCA’s passing. Following along with reaction tweets, I noticed a tweet aimed towards Topspin Media CEO Ian Rogers. Completely unbeknownst to me, Ian worked alongside the Beastie Boys as their webmaster extraordinaire.

It is the dream of every Beastie Boys fan who has his or her own site dedicated to the band: to be selected to work for the Beastie Boys on the official website. This dream is one that came true for Ian C. Rogers.

THERE IT IS. FANS WORKING FOR BANDS.

Would Grimes’ biggest (and most savvy - see: Ian Rogers) fan make sure her official website was updated when the new video dropped? Would they have tirelessly endured a cramped bus with their idol to document the touring experience for other fans? Would they LOVE EVERY MINUTE OF THE EXPERIENCE?

Amanda Palmer’s mind-blowing achievement of raising $700K+ on Kickstarter suggests fans will do all kinds of crazy shit for their idols.

Time to mobilize the troops.

Where to next for music bloggers?

After reading a fantastic interview with Drowned In Sound founder Sean Adams, in which he laments the ‘death of mp3 blogging’, it got me thinking: where to next for these one-time tastemakers?

Bloggers were at one point, the backbone of music discovery. Hell, Pitchfork was once just a humble blog run by a high school grad in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Before the birth of Napster, bloggers had the benefit of scarcity. As put wonderfully by Alexandra Molotkow in the NY Times magazine: ‘Obscure knowledge was once a kind of currency. To get it, you had to be in the loop. You had to know the right people to learn about the right bands.’ Bloggers were the right people.

Moving into the early 2000s, and with file-sharing now growing exponentially, bloggers were still in decent shape thanks to slow internet speeds (oh, the memories of waiting 75+ minutes to download a 10-track LP). Not everyone could have all the music all the time. Their ability to handpick great music for fans to painstakingly download, was still of huge value.

Then in the mid-2000s, a few things happened: broadband got quick, domination by select blogs, blog aggregation beings, recommendations engines are born.

With this, you’ve a toxic combination for bloggers: their perceived value is severely damaged by a lack of scarcity, Pitchfork is beginning to capture most/all of the indiesphere’s attention, and services like The Hype Machine and We Are Hunted are taking blog content out of its natural environment and into a aggregation hub. 

The latter of which, although seemingly a boon for bloggers, means they’re now working harder than ever - mainly for the benefit of others (the aggregation hub eats all the page impressions and advertising opportunities).

Now critically wounded, blogging sustained its final blow: the death of scarcity. Streaming services like Spotify and Rdio now give everyone access to all music all the time. Couple this with recent integrations between these streaming services and Facebook - ‘I just want to listen to what my friends are’ - and very hastily you’ve got the Grim Reaper spooning bloggers en route to binary death.

SO, WHAT THE FUCK NOW?

Like the recorded music business before it, bloggers need to innovate or fade hastily into irrelevance and antiquation.

Luckily for better bloggers, they have bankable skills: writing (often highly undervalued by those who spend most of their days being excellent at writing), digital / marketing chops, as well as A&R. The best bloggers will also have an unbeatable network of artists, labels, managers, and fellow bloggers.

With this in mind, here’s a few potential options:

1. Email Ryan Schreiber.

2. PR / publicity. You’ve already got relationships with media, a fan following of your own, and you know how to get people talking about bands.

3. Blog for bands. The tech industry has given birth to the Community Manager, a role best suited to talented writers / communicators, to be the voice of a brand - yes, band are brands too. You’d be their online voice for blogging, social, email.

4. Become an A&R guy. You’re excellent at finding new bands, traditional A&R people are lazy and likely rely on you (via aggregation hubs) to find new talent. Stop telling everyone about bands you love, and instead fashion yourself into a talent scout.

Of all the opportunities, the A&R business is the most exciting to me. I’ve often thought about building a platform for bloggers to ‘put dibs’ on bands, so that they’re credited with finding them first - and thus being able take some kind of residual percentage of earnings.

Imagine getting together with a group of like-minded bloggers (potentially worldwide - see: my latest project Records Abroad) to create an A&R network, who could eventually challenge indie labels to create hubs of amazing music ripe for exploitation. And just like that - on Easter Sunday no less - the mp3 bloggers rise from the dead.

Time to slow the buzz cycle

Remember that awesome band from last year? They were a three-piece from Brooklyn; lots of jangly guitars. They had a great look; lots of washed out denim. Their on-stage presence was a mix between moody, disinterested and smug. I think Pitchfork gave them a good write up.

Beach Fossils? Real Estate? The Drums? Cloud Nothings? Wild Nothing? It’s all of them.

The buzz cycle is now moving at such an impossible pace that bands are hastily blending into one another, the way road lines tend to become one when driving at high speed.

As a buzz-addled fiend, I’ve struggled to defend myself against the seemingly never-ending barrage of new music . My repeated, inconsiderate and hyperbolic proclamations of everything being the ‘BEST. ALBUM. EVER’ are testament to this.

So, what to do? 

Jesse Israel recently tweeted about Calmbox.me - a strategy to check email only twice per day in an attempt to lessen and eventually quash addiction to email. 

It got me thinking, how would this look for music? CalmBuzz.fm could look something like this:

1. Only seek out new music once per day - 1 hour max.

2. Listen to full tracks only - no skipping.

3. Download/allow offline listening of a max of 3 new albums per week.

4. Purchase the albums you really love on vinyl - then delete them from your digital life.

Considering you’ll now be stuck listening to full tracks during discovery, you’re going to need exceptional quality recommendations during your hour each day. So remember: computers don’t recommend music, people do.

Cloud Nothings = 2012’s first buzz

Forget about Lana Del Rey’s upcoming record, 2012’s first buzz has arrived in the form of Cloud Nothings - indie rockers from Cleveland, Ohio.

Their third studio album Attack On Memory sounds far more polished and energetic than ever before. There’s also a strong ’90s vibe - undoubtedly fuelled by producer Steve Albini (worked with Pixies, Nirvana, Manic Street Preachers). Opener No Future No Pass could’ve almost been written by Frank Black.

Middle-aged men, prepare to lose your minds.

(via Pitchfork - via Complex - via the band - via their mothers)