What will Radiohead do next?

It’s just over a year ago since I wrote the post ‘thoughts from a beach’ – in which I referred to an Interview with Thom Yorke in ‘The Believer’ music issue (still waiting for the2010 issue from Amazon – McSweeney’s publishing is pure gold), and wondered a bit about what Radiohead would do next. It’s something I again came to be thinking about – on the very same beach – just week before last.

This week, viewing the band’s fan-sourced Prague concert video (thoughtfully sound-tracked by the band hence worthwhile streaming quality if you can get it through decent speakers), I went beyond wondering. I am in fact, now quite eager to get my fix of the world’s most talented band once again. It’s been over a year since Radiohead began new studio sessions with long-time producer Nigel Godrich so something must be due fairly soon, but when? However, it’s not so much when as what that interests me most.

Since In Rainbows, there is a massive distraction around Radiohead now – about the way they deliver music. Echoing the music scene itself all too often, there’s a fascination with how the band will release its new music – by what method – possibly more than an interest in the music itself.

But in terms of release strategy, what is there left for the band to do, having made their big statement with “In Rainbows”? Free agents as they are – and now self-appointed business model mavericks – the sky’s no limit – but is there anything that hasn’t already been done?

We’ve had free songs, free albums, track-by-track ‘episodic releases’ – dispensing with the album format – and the release of song-stems for fans to mix themselves. We’ve had crowd-sourced albums, pay-what-you-feel albums and a song-a-day for a year. It’s been done to death. It’s almost boring. Besides, the pay-what-you-like strategy with In Rainbows clearly underwhelmed. It was in fact the made to order box-sets that really ‘performed’.

I was impressed with the value-added packages The Arcade Fire released (through Topspin) – but not as impressed as the record itself, you will have gathered. I want the same from Radiohead. With all my interest in music business models and product innovation, what I need most of all, as a life-long fan, is an unceremonious release of a classic Radiohead album. But is that what they have planned I wonder?

Checking out the competition
Most musicians, especially popular ones who’ve achieved big success and have a reputation to live up to, can be fiercely competitive. Creatively that is. They wouldn’t be as crude as to be commercially competitive of course!

At Wilco’s show on Tuesday night at the Royal Albert Hall I was wondering what was going on through Ed O’Brien’s head as he nodded along throughout the duration of a wonderfully consistent evening’s music.

In recent times – like Radiohead – Wilco has delved deep into sonic experimentation and have gone way out there creatively – notably with records ‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’ and ‘A Ghost Is Born’ – but never at the expense of writing truly great songs – consistently.

It would be nice to think Ed took inspiration from the evening and that between their extraordinary creative individual and collective genius – Radiohead’s prime strategy next time out is to make a major statement first and foremost through the music.

It’s good to be back
A brief thanks to all for sticking with me through a busy summer in which writing JB posts has had to take a back seat. Hopefully I’ll post more often towards the end of this year – a vintage one music wise in my view and well worth more reflection.

Meantime – for fresh discovery I recommend the new Shuffler.fm blog streaming service. Currently in free beta, it is a wonderful way to discover all kinds of stuff you couldn’t even hope to find in most music service catalogues – what a great idea. Anything that scales blogs is most clever. I’ll need to consider its commercial potential for a later post.

A funny thing happened on the way to The National

Mflow’s tagline ‘Discovery is the best thing in music’ may or may not true, but I’ve just made a discovery myself – that the best sort of music discovery can be discovering the music that you already know. That’s a lot of discoveries in one sentence, so let me explain.

I was all set to skip the new National album. I was just going to let it pass, on account of having too much currently stacked up in the ‘recently acquired’ CD pile-up - and the download equivalent (a queue?).

Then I succumbed, having read too many glowing reviews, and put it on order from Amazon, but with self-calibrated expectations. I say this because, though I am a fan of The National (having first discovered them via their wonderful track “About Today” on an Uncut magazine cover-mount) I’ve found them to be a band of great promise if not quite the accomplished article on delivery.

I bought their previous two records “Alligator” and “Boxer” and found them both to contain great moments (notably on Boxer – “Guest Room”, “Fake Empire” and “Mistaken For Strangers”) but overall, patchy (but, aggrieved National fans, read on). I also once bought three tickets to one of the band’s shows at The Astoria on the “Boxer” tour and coaxed two friends along, eulogising about this great new band I’d discovered.

When they opened that gig with “Guest Room” I felt vindicated and all like the great “A&R” man (it sounded absolutely splendid), but the rest of the gig was somewhat marred by singer Matt Berninger’s apparent discomfort on stage. You can actually hear more about his stage-fright issues via a Guardian podcast here (small aside – what do you do when an artist on the cusp of mainstream success and potentially huge live shows – suffers from lack of stage presence? - I can’t see many artists taking much to a suggestion of stagecraft ‘coaching’).

So, I thought I’d skip ‘High Violet’. Thank god I didn’t. I only really got to play it properly because I was travelling (back from the South West) and was in a bit ‘phased out’ (after a disappointing business meeting). For those reasons, I set the album to play on repeat – and just let it run & run (four-five times over maybe) until it kind of got inside my head.

Three weeks later and it’s still there, rattling around. In fact I only really came up for air by re-visiting their previous two albums – both of which now suddenly connect with me much more than they did originally. Alligator especially, is a real treat, as it turns out.

Somehow I now ‘get’ The National. I’ve got beyond the moody baritone ‘miserabilists’ stage and moved on to appreciate the tightly-wound core of fine drumming, bass and guitar, the finely detailed, layered, textured sounds (including wonderfully understated use of piano, strings and brass), the oddly-affecting, existential lyrics and at last, the strained emotional delivery of Matt Berninger’s vocals. And more than that, his superb phrasing.

It all makes sense – and on High Violet manages to exceed the sum of all these wonderful parts – through having better tunes, with better songs – Berninger’s lyrics now more effective in connecting real-life stories with the weird inner-dialogues – effectively making him a fully-paid up member of the Genuine Pop Music Poets Society.

“Someone send a runner for the weather that I’m under for the feeling that I lost today”, for example, from ‘England’ (for me the album’s pinnacle track, and my self-adopted national world cup theme. Was that really ‘England’ playing in background on some recent world cup BBC coverage? I think it was). Or perhaps take this one, from single Bloodbuzz Ohio: “I still owe money, to the money, to the money I owe” – that’s a clever commentary on the recent financial crisis if you want my opinion. My favourite though is from Lemonworld, where that songs protagonist declares he “left my heart to the army, the only sentimental thing I could think of”. It rouses.

But why am I telling you this on Juggernaut, without due consideration for the industry? Well it actually did get me pondering on both the demand side and the supply side of things actually.

On the demand side, as with Mflow for example – we’ve become somewhat absorbed, perhaps even obsessed with, ‘discovering’ new music, with gaining ‘access’ to it, and with the ‘acquisition’ of it. It strikes me these experiences all pale with actually listening, and forming a deeper relationship with the music than you thought might be possible initially. It’s like discovering a new author and then revisiting all his or her other books, with a renewed, re-ignited pleasure. You can find yourself thanking your lucky stars, just for the serendipity of it all. Besides, the album would never have entered my consciousness in the way that it has, without that first bought of repeated listening.

On the supply side, The National’s story amounts to the way it should be for music artists and their development, does it not? ‘High Violet’ is the Band’s fifth album and represents a sure, steady growth creatively and now commercially as well. It’s refreshing, re-assuring even, that we can still witness artists in a steady ascendancy like this. Isn’t this how it used to be? I would wish the same on The Local Natives, or The Temper Trap – or any other type of band with the apparent talent and capability to arrive where The National has.

Has it got something to do with being on an indie label rather than a major labels? Perhaps, except there are plenty of indie bands on majors with what seems like longevity and ascendancy too. Most notably Elbow (though a partial 'rescue' job was done there), Kings of Leon (now so big it's hard to think of them as 'indie' but they are essentially) and others.

But The National's success seems partly down to the fact that the band didn’t get too popular too soon - that they had time to become this good. With ‘High Violet’, The National has indeed been allowed to bloom.

Are we living too fast for slow pop?

Couple of years back I was at a music conference featuring a panel of ‘new millennial’s (young people to you and me) discussing their music listening habits. One explained in all seriousness, that he had “tried putting a CD and just listening, but it didn’t really work for me”. Older members of the audience, including me, sighed out an involuntary laugh.

I intended then, to write something about some of the albums that I grew up with when I was a young adult, reflecting on just how different the experience was then – as a child of the 80’s, musically speaking. Putting on a CD and ‘just listening’ was exactly what we all did. Habitually, frequently, repetitively.

It’s rapidly becoming a lost art in itself though – and this fascinates me. It does so partly because I’m convinced the industry is missing a trick commercially by not promoting more pure enjoyment from music – instead becoming obsessed with access, discovery and acquisition. The most recent example of course is latest ‘buzz’ music service mflow, which has the tagline ‘Discovery it’s the greatest thrill in music’. Nothing wrong with it I suppose, yet there really is something wrong. However, that’s something for another post.

The other fascination for me with modern music consumption is not commercial, but cultural. I think the millennial guy who couldn’t get through full album session is missing out on one of life’s simple, exceptional pleasures. And it worries me that it’s going this way for the majority. When Observer Music Monthly surveyed the UK’s listening habits back in 2005 it found one third of music fans claimed they did still play albums from start to finish ‘occasionally’. I wonder what the proportion is now.

What brought this subject back to me was reading La Roux’s ‘Soundtrack of my life’ in this Sunday’s Observer (sadly, now sans its Music Monthly supplement). Elly Jackson observes – on the subject of one of my favourite and prime examples of slow-pop – Tear For Fears’ ‘Songs From The Big Chair’ that:

“The way it’s recorded and produced is incredible. People don’t take that much time over music any more. And if you did, all your fans would fuck off somewhere else, ‘cause they’re so fickle nowadays”.

I like this quote because it captures both the cultural and commercial trends in music production and consumption. We simply lack the attention spans, as well as the time, and the market responds to that by not supplying such demanding product.

That said, I for one am still trying to create the time and clear the headspace to listen to Joanna Newsome’s latest 3-disc magnum opus. What was she thinking?

For me, the classic slow-pop albums of my formative years are a unique thing, largely of the past. They are unique in that these records tended to contain a mixture of both massive hits, but more experimental, almost sub-classical tracks, either in-between – or sometimes given their own ‘side’ (Kate Bush’s ‘Hounds of Love’ being perhaps the most complete example, with its ‘The Ninth Wave’ second half). These records were made by artists at their commercial peak, coinciding with their creative urge to experiment and move forward.

Sequencing was massively important in creating an impression of vast depth for these records, which sucked the listener in – making a more immersive experience than any 3D film or website I can think of. Both ‘Big Chair’ and ‘Hounds’ are superlative examples. Another would be OMD’s ‘Architecture and Morality’ (the latter two albums curiously and perhaps rightly, not featured on Spotify et al.).

Other examples? Perhaps the masters of this whole process were Talk Talk. Perhaps the best example of such a work is Dark Side Of The Moon.

There are probably endless examples from days past. But where are the modern slow-pop masterpieces? They hardly exist – partly because the culture we live in leaves them little space in which to thrive. We are no longer connected by this type of cultural experience – too busy discovering, accessing or sharing what we haven’t really listened to that much!

I’ve previously argued that Radiohead’s ‘OK Computer’ might well be the last example of this particular ‘genre’ – a popular but experimental album. Since Radiohead have ‘moved on’ from albums, they may not supply any more of the same. U2’s experimental side and commercial peak seems long since past. Can we look to Elbow, or even Coldplay to do something a bit old-fashioned – namely connect massive popularity with a risky but ultimately successful creative formula? Or even La Roux per chance.

I hope they do and I hope it sparks a renaissance for slow-pop, for the sake of the new millennials.

My top five slow-pop records then, which I would not dream of mflow-ing you, but would advise you to get on to Amazon now...

1. Kate Bush: Hounds of Love.

2. Tears For Fears: Songs From The Big Chair.

3. OMD: Architecture and Morality.

4. Talk Talk: The Colour of Spring.

5. U2: Zooropa.

Ps. For the record, I like mflow – both its current execution and its possibilities, but for me it still isn’t quite the answer to the faltering music industry model.


I’m on mflow as ‘keithj’ if you can find some slow pop for me!

Going, gone & gone for good this time

Going
Some weeks, the music industry delivers nothing but disappointment. It started this time last week hearing Mark Thomson announcing at the FT Media Conference, as part of a new BBC consultation, the proposed closure of 6 Music. The logic was nothing if not cloudy. However, it has been good to note that since, there has been a really strong & swift backlash, with a groundswell of opinion rightly raging against the machine.

Now 6 Music is not perfect, but it genuinely serves a sustainable, growing niche - exactly the role of a public service broadcaster essentially. If you, like me, don't want to lose your Guy Garvey's Finest Hour (the best two hours of a Sunday evening there is second perhaps only to when Wallander's on), Gideon Coe or Adam & Joe, then go and join up the various petitions and comment on the BBC consultation site. Help make them see some sense for goodness sakes.

Gone
So I got a call yesterday from a business correspondent at the Indy asking for a quote on Elio Leoni Sceti. I hadn't heard the news even, but it took me less than a second to realise - and to not be surprised. Didn't even miss a beat in the conversation. But it's no less disturbing when reflecting on it. The italian gent was, in my view, an inspired choice - something Guy had not exactly built a reputation for in the music business, by the point to which he hired Leoni-Sceti.

I met Elio twice last year. Both times he made a point of coming from behind his desk, not a blackberry or iPhone in sight, to sit ready for pure, effective exchange. Undivided attention. That's quite rare among music leaders in my experience. He was a good listener and asker of questions. He's calm and collected and had managed to galvanise what was left of morale within EMI. The results under his tenureship (if you can call it that) were unarguably good.

But then after just 18 months in the role, he has become yet another licensed-to-innovate leader from outside the music industry that has essentially failed to innovate from within it. Not his fault. Like a legendary football manager once said, you can only do so much up to the point when it all becomes about the players on the pitch. But with music, maybe it's not the players either, but the structure by which the whole game is put together.

Gone again
Even much worse news had come the evening before via a text from a friend (you can see how much I'm keeping up with music news of my own volition right now), who sent me a link to a Tim Jonze blog titled "Sparklehorse took the ugly and made it beautiful". I knew instantly what that meant - before reading one more word of the fittingly touching piece. Turns out Mark Linkous had shot himself in the heart.

I bought Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot when it was first released in 1995. Didn't get on with it, despite all the rave reviews it got. I left Sparklehorse well alone until I capitulated - again on the strength of the reviews - and bought It's A Wonderful Life on the way home from a New York trip. Fell in love with it on listen two - right there on the return flight. I saw them/him tour that album with a gig at Union Chapel Islington - quietly inspiring. I loved seeing a sedentary Linkous just play, calm & focused, his sometimes driving rock, but his oh so delicate fragile ballads - he even played the tracks with all the twiddly bits. He seemed to know the strength of the material and the way in which it was played was what mattered, more than any sense of performance. It was a privilege to witness that. And I liked the way he played guitar, like he'd learnt it only recently, but didn't want to play any better than he exactly needed to for the songs.

I've since played his weirdly abstract, utterly unique sounding music during times high & low. Most of all, I remember playing a compilation of Sparklehorse ballads I labeled 'lullabies' (on minidisk) to my first daughter for the weeks after she was born. I even nick-named her Homecoming Queen (later Queenie) after the song of that name. Kids actually love Sparklehorse, because the lyrics make sense to them maybe, somehow. And he mentions lots of animals. Somehow, of all Linkous's spaced out crazy lyrics (did I really forget to mention him when I blogged here about those before) the one I like best is from Spirit Ditch, which might actually frighten my kids a bit. It goes:

"woke up in, a burned out basement
sleeping with metal hands
in a spirit ditch"

Now I don't know what that means and you don't know either. Neither did Linkous probably. And none of us would want to end up there. But my word it is worth listening to every now & then. Linkous reminds us it's a sad & beautiful world, but also a wonderful life. Linkous was fully qualified - after all he once died for a full two minutes before making a recovery. But this time he really is in the Spirit Ditch.

Throwing a clanger into the search engines

I've just been reading the Guardian Film & Music (as I do every single Friday without fail). Delighted to see the leader piece about none other than JB favourites Spoon! Tom Ewing was writing about abstract but absorbing lyrics but covers (and nails) Spoon's musical raison d'etre. It's a great piece, please read it
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/jan/21/tom-ewing-spoon-indie-rock

Spoon's new album is out next week and I for one, can't wait. Although Monday's schedule of Laura Veir's July Flame and the Tindersticks new album Falling Down a Mountain is pretty enticing as well. And Laura play's Union Chapel next Wednesday 27th - see you there!

I was also reading Tom Salmon's (always interesting) Click To Download column, in F&M about 'spotiseek' - a new search engine built on both Spotify and Last.fm's API's. Not another search engine! However, it does sound impressive, so I'm going to give this one a try and report back.

However, I don't know if it will satisfy my current musical curiosity, which can only be described as 'oddly reflective'. I've spent most of January playing my favourites of the decade - as reported last post. But as I've done so, it has occurred to me there are certain patterns in pop music that have always attracted me, as follows:

1. The lyricist as poet. Guy Garvey, Nick Cave, Jeff Tweedy et al. I do like a bit more from my lyricists. I like abstract too - Britt Daniels and Thom Yorke are both masters ("Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon", "I spent, the night in the map room/I humanised a vacuum" etc.). But the poets really have my attention and respect, for putting the bloody effort in! Take the Tweedy verse from 'Jesus etc'. "Tall buildings shake/voices escape singing sad sad songs/tuned to chords strung down your cheeks/bitter melodies turning your orbit around". Poetry, no?
   
2. The Gibson ES guitar. Spoon, Aimee Mann, Laura Veirs et al. The playing has everything to do with it, but so does the guitar. I love guitars. I own the most amazing Ibanez Les Paul copy from the early 70's I'd never part with it. But it's the sound of the ES, with distortion running through it - played apreggio or solo. It gets me every time I absolutely love it.
   
3. The piano/keyboard as rhythm instrument. Have a listen to 'Don't Lose Yourself' by Laura Veirs or of course my classic 'The Ghost of You Lingers' by Spoon. I find the use of the keyboard in driving the main rhythm of a song wonderfully uplifting. Music's great when instruments can be made to do unexpected things.
   
4. Sophisticated pop. I like pop songs with a bit of arrangement. Some orchestration. I like a pop song that could almost be classical in a sense. Hence Merz. Any number of Merz's songs features multi-instrumental, time-shifting qualities. Try 'Malcolm' for example, from Moi et Mon Camion. Bill Callahan's new album, or John Vanderslice are also good examples. Elbow are moving in this direction too. Quite wonderful.
   
5. The bass as melody. The opposite of point 3 to some extent I know, but it gets me for different reasons. I love the bass. I love the way John Taylor plays bass. But my favourite bass line ever, is by Sting, of all people. In the song 'Spirits In The Material World', the strings are plucked as the rhythm and the bass drives a sophisticated, but thumping, melody. That is possibly my favourite pop song. They don't make singles like that anymore do they?

There's much more, and I wonder what other idiosyncratic themes, patterns other music lovers are attracted to. But what I'd really love to do, is chuck all this is to a search engine that works on that level. But that might never be possible, which is part of the mind-blowing mathematics that make up music, I suppose.

Just a thought, not bad for January though!

2009: The year of music not necessarily from 2009

This will be one of a few year-end round-up posts, just for fun really, nothing too serious. If you want to catch more ‘business-like’ music related writings then keep an eye on my guest posts on the MIDEMNET blog, with the next one through in a week or so. If you’ve enjoyed the JB blog’s insights into the music business throughout this year look out for a series of insight-led pieces I will be writing from next year on the wider media sectors and beyond...for now it’s about the music...

It’s coming up to that time again, reflecting back on the musical year. All the papers and music magazines have had double debriefs to contend with as we wind up both 2009 and of course the decade. My reading pile is substantial, which does not sit too well with my first resolution for 2010 to ‘read less, listen more’.

As ever, music itself played a central role in my year both in terms of consulting projects but of course in terms of music itself. I can’t help but feel compelled to round-up each year – I think I have done this more or less for as long as I can recall. But here’s the thing – this will be the last year in which I do this.

The reason is simple: I’ve stopped defining my music consumption and experiences by time, certainly by year. In 2009, I found myself discovering (I use the term ‘discovery’ to embrace not just the practice of finding music, but connecting with it) music that could be from anytime.

Most notably, the record I played most this year was GaGaGaGaGa by Spoon, which was released last year. I have also just being enjoying Martha Wainwright’s album from last year ‘I Know You’re Married But I’ve Got Feelings Too’, which is a really rich collection of songs. I’ve been much more tardy though, in discovering I Am Kloot’s ‘Natural History’, a wonderful album that I actually did buy the year it came out – 2001 – but have played to death only this year. I will definitely pounce on their new record next year, not least as it is being produced by Elbow’s Guy Garvey who is a patron of the band – context that might have provided some glue for my connection to them after all this time.

I also just discovered Gil Scott Heron following news items about his ‘reappearance’ this year. And I’ve re-discovered Grace Jones, Talk Talk and The Beatles for the umpteenth time. Much of this of course is related to events in 2009, so the context is contemporary, but the music itself is from way back.

As for music released this year there are plenty of records I’ve acquired but have yet to connect with, somewhat disappointingly. This includes, to my surprise, the new albums by The Arctic Monkeys, Wilco and Metric – three artists I have absolutely loved, previously. Slightly disturbed by this, since I can’t tell when the opportunity will come to hear these records in a new light. I was also disappointed with quite a few records that came strongly recommended or anticipated, including The Duke & The King (it's just a bit dull, no?), Doves and even The Hours’ ‘ See The Light’, which lacked the intensity and staying power of ‘Narcissus Road’. The latter is one of my records of the decade by the way, which I will post on later.

From the year itself, I more immediately connected with the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s ‘It’s Blitz’; EG White’s ‘Adventure Man’; Adela Diane’s ‘To Be Still’ and bona fide ‘return to form’ albums by Madness, Pearl Jam and Alice In Chains.

Pride of place in the CD player and on the iPod however were Portico Quartet’s ‘Isla’ – a genuine ‘grower’ that gets richer with familiarity; John Vanderslice’s ‘Romanian Names’ - he defines the genre 'interesting pop'; Spiro’s wonderfully uplifting ‘Lightbox’; Pink Martini’s ‘Splendour in The Grass’ and Bill Callaghan’s wistful ‘Sometimes I Wish I Were An Eagle’ which has marvellous arrangements.

The surprise of the year for me was Starsailor’s ‘All The Plans’ which I was moved to blog about back in March. There is always delight in discovering music accidentally, but that’s sometimes even greater when you really didn’t like the previous work of an artist. I didn’t previously like anything about Starsailor – suspecting them of being a bit run of the mill – but they completely won me over with such a superbly written, performed and heartfelt record that really doesn’t contain a single filler track. Put away your preconceptions is the lesson there I suppose.

I did not get around to Animal Collective and any number of other ‘buzz’ bands, but that’s not untypical for me. I discovered Arctic Monkeys on the second album, not the over-hyped first. I’m in no hurry. And that’s our divine right as music fans isn’t it? I’m really not interested in having music rammed down my throat – that’s the old way. I don’t really listen to music radio (with the exception of Guy Garvey, Gideon Coe and occasional KCRW) so I have no idea what’s being pushed. I’m very much on the pull side – actively using the reviews and taking in other contexts.

I know what I’m ready to like and when I'm good and ready. As Daniel Levitin says in his fascinating book 'This Is Your Brain On Music': "Trying to appreciate new music can be like contemplating a friendship in that it takes time, and sometimes there is nothing you can do to speed it up".

But the era of lists and end notes on a year may well be over. As music fans, it’s increasingly unimportant what week, quarter or even year, we discover the music, but how we discover it, enjoy it and pass on the good word about it. I wonder however, if I can resist the urge to list.

Music is a different business – it should do more for music that’s different

A week or so ago, I made five recommendations of music that’s a bit different to my (& maybe your) usual tastes, as part of my strategy to prioritise my music consumption – as set out in this previous post.

Those records were new or recent releases by Portico Quartet, Spiro, Steve Martin, Bill Frisell, The Unthanks and Pink Martini. None of them are ‘popular’ – but each album does fall into a category of sorts – one the many hundreds of music genres or sub-genres. Even Pink Martini – a blend of just about everything except pop, is described on Wikipedia as ‘vintage music’ – a sub genre probably, of ‘easy listening’.

As an industry – if you can really refer to the distribution of commercial music as an industry (a worthy post-grad paper perhaps) – the incredible, bewildering variety of products is what makes the music business totally unique. No other business that I know of puts full-blown produced products out there on the market without any prior knowledge of what will happen next. Sure, if you have a major pop artist with a known commercial track record and the whole dashboard of modern demand metrics, you might be able to put together a half-decent sales forecast – but you’d still be pushing it to be within + or – 100%.

But forget those, if you have any one of the above records – in niche genres – how on earth do you know if you can even hope to break even on releasing the record commercially – i.e. having funded its discovery, production, marketing and distribution? Because the one thing you do know is that you will not have a global hit on your hands.

In this sense, the music business is also unique – in that there are few genuinely ‘independent’ or ‘alternative genre’ records that become global smash hits. The movie business is different – it produces - even if it’s just a couple - of real indie smashes each year, pretty consistently. Be it Blair Witch, The March Of The Penguins, Slumdog, or the very latest example - Paranormal Activity – the small guys can make it really, really big in film.

It happens less so in music – if you look at the top fifty selling albums each year they are dominated by pop records released by majors. Neither small independent’s or niche genre artists get a look in. There are clear reasons based on industry structure. Film has an established independent film network that is supported by major festivals around the world – many of which are celebrated as significant cultural events. It has an ‘art-house’ cinema distribution network too. Film also gets significant government support on the investment side.

The music industry doesn’t have the equivalents. Yes there are numerous small venues that cater to the alternative – but they are not effectively networked and so do not make up more than the sum of their parts. Same for independent labels, really – hence there have been recent initiatives to give the sector a much needed leg-up – such as independent charts. But these often confuse ‘independence’ between source – i.e. label and actual musical style. As for retail, well we can see what’s happened there and it is almost too painful to keep watching.

Music that’s genuinely different, alternative or niche must simply submit to being commercially second-rate. The only global phenomenon of the same nature I can recall is the success of the Buena Vista Social Club Cuban music movement – and that all started with – an independent movie!

I applaud initiatives that try up the ante for the ‘movement’ that is niche music – such as the upcoming January 2010 Reverb festival of concerts at the Roundhouse, which has some support from the Arts Council of England and local Camden Council – though only small commercial sponsors.

However, I’m absolutely convinced this music can scale better than it does, if only it had the right platform. After all, this is the digital age where niche content was in fact supposed to have become the heir to the Blockbuster King, by now according to the uber-thinking-journalists.

Take this simple insight. I have three Pink Martini CDs so I like them – they have grown on me over the years without necessarily becoming an act I would recommend to others regularly. But I know I could name maybe 20-30 other people in my life who would like them as much as me if not more so – but who have never even heard of them. My feeling is that Portico Quartet could achieve the same sort of crossover potential in the UK that Jazz trio E.S.T. achieved in their native Sweden – where they regularly made the mainstream charts.

While I wouldn’t say the same for Spiro or The Unthanks – I’m am pretty convinced that they could probably triple whatever little they do sell - easily – if only they could get some effective, targeted exposure to their receptive audiences, and that could well be the difference between loss & profit.

Steve Martin, well, he doesn’t exactly need to have a hit – and has in fact spent extravagant amounts of his own money on making and touring his ‘The Crow’. But it is such a good record it deserves success in its own right, not just as some kind of vanity project. As for Bill Frisell – at least he is on exactly the right label to connect with his audience – Nonesuch – which specialises in route-to-market for eclectic, different music aimed at the more mature, discerning ear.

And here is the second insight for today. I’m a mature and enthusiastic music fan who has listened to so much stuff that I am receptive – in a state of absolute readiness – to hear more music that’s different. Where do I connect with my fellow audience? I’ve no doubt that audience is large (huge globally); fairly well-off and fairly uninterested in piracy – probably even pro-actively disposed to paying top whack for music - as the rich cultural good that it is. The reason we don’t buy much these days is we are uninspired and ill-informed. No one is putting this music in front of us.

Now I know there is the BBC and in the US, ‘public radio’ – and this is great. Programmes like ‘Late Junction’ are the equivalent of splendid cuisine for the ears – even if you sometimes have to work at it to acquire the taste first. But I don’t really do radio. I want to check this stuff out on demand and then buy it and keep playing it until I love it.

Also, I know these artists could get greater exposure in a number of ways – like what if Portico could get a support slot for Radiohead, or if Spiro got a great synch opportunity? That could break ground, but only as a one-off, transient thing – it might serve those artists well if they are lucky – but it’s not reaching that huge global audience of un-served, unlucky listeners.

And finally here’s the irony. In the UK we are about to get bombarded with new music services (again) – each one upping the ante on the ‘business model’ – more & more music for less & less cash. But the music is always the same stuff. The front-line recommendations are the big artists about to assault the radio networks, the TV and press. Spotify this week has the exclusive with Robbie Williams (do they really need each other?). Sky Songs has launched – in a promotion with The Sun newspaper. It’s like daytime radio all over again - the same music to the broadest audience possible.

Even out of those six million songs in the impressively large catalogues, there’s nothing for we-who-want-different, since we don’t know what we’re looking for, or if we do and hit search, it will not be there more than half the time.

Why don’t we do something different for those people who want something different? I’m on the case...the next post will show us the way...

Black Gives Way to Blue: The Return of AIC and resulting format confusion...

There’s nothing like music for taking you back. Seventeen years ago (at the start of my professional career) I was what you might call an angry young man. Music has always provided me with a kind of fuel – and at the time music - specifically the music of Alice In Chains, was fuelling my anger rather nicely. This past two weeks have taken me right back there, but in the best way imaginable.

Back in 1992 I was on some major systems project or other for an energy company, in the employ of Andersen Consulting, now otherwise known as Accenture. I was sharing a flat with a studious American called Floyd and a conscientious, ambitious young lady called Heidi, neither of whom could make head ‘nor tail of me or my anger.

To Floyd & Heidi, that project seemed like the place to be, the pinnacle of professional assignments. To me it just sucked. So much so, I would start my days with a loud blast of AIC’s ‘Dirt’ (I’m talking LOUD and before 8 am). I must have been the flatmate from hell. Belated apologies Floyd & Heidi wherever you are.

For those unfamiliar, Dirt is an absolute classic. It’s unforgiving, relentless, driving, bleak, but as melodic as rock gets. It was my album of the year and AIC was my favourite band then, my fuel of choice.

It was with trepidation then, that I approached the new record by AIC released just a few weeks ago. It was a real surprise to me. I read a gig review in The Guardian while I was on vacation (I had NO IDEA they had reformed). Anyone at all familiar with the group will know why this is more than a little remarkable.

What I loved about AIC is what was makes so many bands special – the blend of two great talents working together – the 2+2 making 5. In AIC’s case this is guitarist and songwriter Jerry Cantrell and, back then in the angry days of 1992 – singer and frontman Layne Staley. Cantrell brought the driving, power-drill guitars, Staley one of the most organic and original voices in rock music. The two also combined for those distinctive harmonies that made the band stand out from anything else from the grunge scene at that time, or since. But Staley was a heavy heroin user and eventually died of an overdose in 2002.

And that is what makes AIC’s revival so remarkable. Staley was essentially irreplaceable, but some years on - has been replaced. The new singer William DuVall (a 42 year old who has been around for years with other bands) not only sounds remarkably like Staley, but of course, fills in perfectly for those harmony parts, that can be heard throughout the new record in all their glory.

Black Gives Way To Blue is a fabulous album that has somehow arrived just at the right time for me personally and for other AIC fans I hope. Nearly 20 years on since I became a fan I was frankly worried I might find it too LOUD, but I don’t at all - though I do prefer the slower tracks. The title track (which features some lovely piano by none other than Elton John) is the best ballad I have heard this year. It’s about death but somehow is utterly life-affirming.

Of course, I had to have this particular record on CD. I could not possibly be satisfied by previewing a new AIC album on Spotify. Not only did the reviews reassure me it was an album good enough to invest in (there are no weak tracks on this album - it's filler free), but I didn’t want to listen to it and think it was ‘just okay’ which is how most stuff sounds to me on Spotify – not because of sound quality issues (I have some pretty good computer speakers) – but because it’s on tap, so I can never quite concentrate on it for some reason.

I didn’t want to download it either, probably because I have all AIC’s previous releases on disc (the last full album being 1995’s self-titled release). This isn’t logical either, because I'm hardly a record collector, even when it comes to my favourite bands. I can only readily find Dirt, as it sits there pride of place on my ‘All Time Classics’ shelf. Where the hell are my ‘Jar of Flies’ and ‘AIC’ albums then? Somewhere in the rubble – either in the ‘transitory cupboard’? (not current, not classic, not yet in the shed) – or surely not – actually in the shed! Or worse, gone.

So, ironically enough, I’m now back on Spotify streaming the back catalogue...convenient isn't the word. There just isn’t one way to access, listen, organise and store music these days and that’s a good thing. But sometimes it drives me crazy.

Music in-box jammed full this week. I’ve been reading about the Pixie’s outstanding re-union gig at Brixton Academy and since I don’t know their music (I’m acutely aware of my ‘music gaps’) I’m really keen to get to it. But then I am enthralled to the new Alice In Chains and Pearl Jam records and enjoying my own personal grunge revival. On the other hand, I bought three albums yesterday (7 Digital’s £5 albums are irresistible) – Editors, Ravonettes and The Flaming Lips. I’ve checked out a few tracks from the first two records and they are red hot. But I'm so enjoying The Temper Trap's 'Conditions' still. I've just received a few interesting playlists from respected music colleagues as well. And I’m still trying to work my way through The Beatles re-masters. Think I’ll just combust, it’s much easier...

Can The Beatles finally realise their ambitions?

In Richard DeLillo’s book The Longest Cocktail Party there’s an amusing passage around the release of The White Album (I think, from memory, I can no longer find my copy to check) whereby Apple Corps, the then recently formed Beatles operating company, were positively vexed by the album’s sales performance. The album – an expensive double – was comfortably installed at number one of course, but someone in the Apple camp had calculated that only one in ten households had bought the record. ‘One in ten’ seemed like an outrage – nine out of every ten households hadn’t (yet) bought it! The marketing plan – if such things existed in 1968 – became a ‘how do we get the other nine to buy it’.

Even in their heyday, The Beatles didn’t quite achieve ubiquity (indeed, another band on the EMI label – Queen – has sold more albums to date, worldwide, if my copy of Mojo rock trivia is to be believed). But the remarkable fact is, The Beatles have – as a commercial musical entity – never stopped striving for it and probably never will. Thirty years after the band split, 2000’s “1” compilation of the collective number 1 singles, broke sales records around the world and introduced the band to a whole new set of audiences. Throughout the nineties The Beatles had seen a steady renewal of interest, thanks to the rise of Britpop during that decade.

Now 2009 marks another landmark year in The Beatles commercial career, with the re-masters releases and the arrival of the band into the gaming world via Rock Band. The early sales analysis on the re-masters is impressive, with sales of 2.25 million in the first four days. See the country breakdown on Hypebot here. The campaign seems easily sustainable as Christmas approaches with those two juicy box sets to choose from – there’ll be plenty of fans who want to own both.

With the re-issue campaign being ‘insight-based’ I’m curious to know more about who has bought what of the re-masters – not just the country-based data. I’m intrigued as to whether the re-issues have found truly wide audiences as “1” did, or whether the majority of purchases have been made by the owners of previous recordings. What does the audiophile market make of the re-masters? Did they rate the stereo mixes or stick with the mono?

Also, I’m wondering if many consumers have been tempted to make their first CD purchases for a good while having otherwise ‘gone digital’ – or whether indeed the digital audience has shown any interest at all. Have any digital natives bought their first CD from this collection? If so, they may now understand what they’ve missed in never having a physical relationship with music.

Sifting through these beautifully presented packages (EMI & Apple have got this packaging decision right – no ugly jewel boxes - but attractive digipacks, with the Mono sets coming with a nicely replicated vinyl aesthetic). The Beatles records make so much sense as tangible objects. Playing back Revolver, The White Album, Abbey Road – I’ve found myself just staring at the back covers – something I haven’t done since I was a teenager, basically.

Among the Beatles’ many remarkable ‘firsts’ are breakthroughs so attached to the concept of albums – in physical form - it’s somehow hard to imagine a ‘digital Beatles’. The iconography of the cover art, the photogenic nature of the band, the sequencing of songs (alternating Lennon & McCartney-led compositions but throwing in the odd George & Ringo number in just the right spots), the fact that most of the albums are albums in the truest sense – with no actual singles taken from them at all.

Holding these products gives a sense of music worth the money – at a tenner a throw these packages and their contents are phenomenal value. This feeling is exactly (desperately) what music needs to instil in music fans – this sense of immense value from what we hold in our hands as the music plays. Can this ever be achieved with digital?

Perhaps it can, via ever more beautiful devices and with music as the killer application in those devices. But we have a long long way to go. The Beatles digitally, could deliver everything digital music so far lacks – an amazing library of context. I can imagine holding a device with which I could browse the incredibly rich vaults of artwork, photography and editorial as The Beatles’ music plays. For example, the absorbing stories of their songs as captured in Ian MacDonald’s remarkable book Revolution In The Head. That could add a new dimension to this music, but could it ever be achieved with all the rights clearances required? Would we buy it at a price that makes it all worthwhile?

Could the re-mastering process be applied to a lossless sound format for digital? If so maybe another new dimension is possible. But I guess these days, for The Beatles to finally achieve that modest ambition from 1968 to be in every household, it must come down to whether they get licensed for streaming – but I can’t see the value in that commercially for EMI & Apple. Why would they reduce a valuable, renewable asset like that to the common denominator of streaming?

The same reasoning lies behind a recent Sony decision to remove the Bob Dylan catalogue from streaming services. The classics live on forever, sell steadily and get a new lease of life every so often – a pattern that would be discontinued by availability on streaming platforms. Then again, every music fan – of any age - should hear these songs at some stage, especially now they have been re-tuned for the modern age and sound as fresh as they do timeless. For that to happen I guess The Beatles will need to join the great music library in the cloud, eventually.

Next: A new Pearl Jam album, followed by the return of Alice In Chains. Can any genre from the age of CD buying make a comeback before it’s too late?

post-note: Listening to the Beatles catalogue I had never realised how much their sound has influenced the music I've listened to most in recent years. If you are looking for a modern equivalent, try Elliot Smith, Spoon, I Am Kloot, Super Furry Animals, Brendon Benson - they all sound so much more Beatlesesque than anything from the britpop era.

Thoughts from a beach: Michelle, Mandy, reading not listening and Radiohead. Not in that order.

I’m just back from ‘annual vacation’. As an independent, that basically means the summer off. Since you can’t get a rise out of clients or colleagues in the music business during any day in August, the only thing for it is to down tools and enjoy it.

Some quality time on my favourite beach in Cornwall helped (weather: acceptable). For most music nuts, extended beach time equates with long iPod listening sessions but alas, not for me. The need for vigilance in policing the whereabouts of three small children means I have to be satisfied with the sounds of the beach. Which is okay, because I love the sounds of the beach.

Reading not listening

However, my music consumption never stops. Rather than listening I found myself reading music. The usual sources came into play: The Guardian’s Film & Music on Fridays (beach reading doesn’t come much better), the latest Word, Uncut and Mojo (best of the three – the Word’s interview with Robert Wyatt – whataguy). I did head out on August’s middle Sunday to buy The Observer Music Monthly, but sadly, there was no sign of it. Worrying.

However, more unusually, I took along issue number one of Loops, the new ‘journal’ of music writing from indie label Domino and Faber & Faber – arty, even a little pretentious perhaps, but diverting enough for more cerebral, abstract moments. Similar was the music special edition of The Believer, which came with the best covermount compilation CD I’ve heard yet, plus an interesting (but not fascinating) interview with Thom Yorke.

Thom’s one of the few artists I’ll always make the time read (along with Nick Cave, Mark Linkous and the Gallaghers (the latter purely for laughs)). His most interesting insight on music from this piece was the new emphasis on ‘natural selection’. Something I’ve blogged about recently is too much music and the inefficiency of current distribution systems in getting the right music to consumers. On the artist side, with so much ‘competition’ and noise – and hype – one thing that will be on your side is just how good you really are – the natural selection point.

It’s a view many artists hold now and I think is a healthy one for both artists and businesses alike these days. Quality of content and innovation in the way you release it, will prevail.
Also, his recommended music site Boomkat http://boomkat.com/ is well worth a look. It’s another new content brand featuring a filtered approach to independent music along with many of the others I have featured on this blog including Think Indie, Mondomix, Lost Tunes, Daytrotter et al.

Finally, his (rather secretive) comments about the new Radiohead project whetted the appetite nicely – though it looks like Radiohead will be releasing a series of singles or ep’s rather than an album. I hope they don’t disappoint. Seeing the footage from Reading reminded me of just how great Radiohead is. They are the only current band I can think of that can captivate and mesmerize a large audience live in the same way the old greats can (which seems at odds with the booming live industry). We need more of them and more from them.

Talking of greats, I also read a shed load of reviews for The Arctic Monkeys new album (it’s out, but I’m currently restraining myself) and The Fabs. Decidedly mixed reviews, which is interesting, but the bands current ‘career position’ fascinates me and I’m looking forward to hearing it for that as well as the music itself. Oh - and catching up with their Reading headline slot too.

Post-holiday with The Beatles

More pertinent to me is finally hearing what I’ve been reading about a lot recently – The Beatles re-releases. With reviews ranging from those insisting on the catalogue and especially certain songs such as Michelle, being ‘transformed’ (read Mojo’s review for example) to more sanguine analysis (The Independent today), playback has to be one of those rapidly disappearing ‘appointments to listen’ where you put the CD on and actually play it back from start-to-finish and listen to it, not just hear it.

I’m also interested of course, in the commercial impact of the re-issues. A few years back, EMI had pinned great hopes on the release of the ‘Love’ album, only to be disappointed by consumers’ reaction to it. I don’t have any such fears for the remasters. Not only will sales be a massive boon to EMI and Apple Corps, but will probably even have a suturing effect on the entire CD business in Q4 and Q1 2010. I wouldn’t be surprised by sales in the order of tens of millions across all the titles.

What’s more, this is hardly the end of the commercial story for The Beatles recordings. The decision not to release the catalogue digitally starts to make sense in the context of the new remasters releases on CD. Digital will come, but I wouldn’t discount vinyl either – surely with the rise in high-end vinyl box sets a-la In Rainbows, The Beatles catalogue would reap lucrative results. A Beatles vintage turntable anyone?

(bizarre but true aside: I find reading anything about The Beatles painful after an experience a few years ago related to a children’s birthday party in my neighbourhood, a rotten hangover and Sir Paul McCartney – yes the real life Macca, not an impersonator. It was all too much).

Fly Mandy, Fly

Finally, I found myself catching a whole bunch of music related business articles, thanks to Lord Mandelson. 'Mandy' has instigated a new push within UK Government to help enforce against file-sharing, upping the pressure on UK ISP’s to monitor file-sharing and step-in if necessary. He even wrote a comment piece in The Times clarifying his motives. It’s all a bit vague of course and given the lack of progress along these lines in other markets (and not a dickie bird about such an approach in the US) we’ll have to see if the UK Government’s strategy gets anywhere beyond rhetoric.

One thing struck me though is that if Mandelson’s title includes innovation – which it does – where is the emphasis on innovation with this approach? Yes, a crackdown on P2P (which I wholly support) creates breathing space for the industry to offer innovative approaches. But the complexities within the music industry and its inflexible structure means that’s precisely where it needs the help – in brokering truly innovative solutions between all parties. Come on Mandy get to that.

Amongst all this exhausting reading I did manage to squeeze in the briefest musical interludes, with some help from the iPod’s random function. In amongst it all some highly connected listening involving Alice in Chains, Peter Gabriel and some vintage Aha. My resulting vaguely beach-related playlist:

Merz, Silver Moon Ladders
Queen, In Only Seven Days
Neil Young, On The Beach
Peter Gabriel, Sky Blue
Alice in Chains, Nutshell
Sparklehorse, Please Don’t Take My Sunshine Away
Wilco, Sky Blue Sky
Turin Brakes, Fishing For A Dream
XTC, You And The Clouds Will Still Be Beautiful
Aha, Memorial Beach
Blondie, Follow Me

The new way to listen #2: Too much music, so little time

A very good friend of mine is a very heavy CD buyer. His guilty pleasure is small but frequent (almost weekly) Amazon splurges – batches of three or four CDs, including lots of new releases. Just last week, to my surprise, his batch included albums by La Roux and Little Boots, two dangerously over-hyped UK female pop acts – not my friend’s usual fare at all.

I had to ask, why? But I do know the answer. Three years ago that’s how I used to discover new music – buying CDs on Amazon & Play.com. For us, the CD generation, it’s easy to see the attraction. At around eight-nine quid a pop, the average price is 30% below when we began buying CDs in the 80s. And with many new releases attracting good reviews, it seems like good value. As for CDs vs. downloads it seems like a no-brainer – CD wins for sound quality, last-ability, tactile comfort etc.

But this kind of consumer behaviour is anachronistic these days. For one thing, these frequently bought CDs are unlikely to be played much – nothing like to a level of frequency reaching a good return on investment. My friend admitted to both the above mentioned albums being “alright, not earth shattering”. I’m guessing he’ll never play either disc anything like enough to become nicely familiar with, or to discover any hidden depths within, the music.

I’m placing no judgement whatsoever on those two artists or their debut records. I am placing judgement though, on the times, and on how we as consumers, are best place to navigate them to enjoy our music to the full.

As engaged, interested and active music buyers, we’ll simply never ever keep up with the supply on offer. Let me bore you with the statistics. There are more records released commercially now than ever – nearly 34,000 separate albums in 2008 (BPI data) – steadily increasing every year from just over 19,000 titles released back in 2000. In the US, over 100,000 album titles were released in 2008 (Neilsen SoundScan), a large increase on any previous year, thanks to digital-only releases.

And that’s assuming that, like me, you are essentially uninterested in wading through the oceans of records released by unsigned or DIY bands via Myspace, brands and blogs. If you are interested in those then double or treble your already overwhelming choice.

However, more critically than volume is the issue of the music’s qualities. The heavy buying CD generation has invested much time & money buying up their collection of classics – those albums they return to time & again. Those albums we played in full, in a darkened room in our youth. Those records that helped us through the formative years, the early big choices in life, etc. etc. Often these were bought on CD some time after we first loved them on vinyl or on tape.

However good modern music gets, it’s so hard for new artists to compete in that space – to compete with nostalgia. And with so much new music derivative of what’s gone before, new artists are sometimes no more than an interesting twist on what’s past – the stuff we really loved and still love. Witness the recent revival of synth-based pop – never done better than the eighties. And even if the Tings Tings, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, LadyHawke, and swathe of more recent acts like Florence & The Machine can compete creatively with the eighties, can they compete emotionally with how that music caught on and connected at the time - how it joined people together en masse.

No wonder there is room even in today’s jam-packed music market for eighties revival bands – playing live and even making new records (for the record, Aha, Duran Duran and Simple Minds never actually went away). Those bands were lucky enough to come of age at a time when growing a fan base was easier. And for their fans, it’s easier nowadays to gravitate towards those artists you know, the one you invested in back in the day. It’s comforting that they’re still around.

For young music fans and for older but active music discoverers, the only way to navigate the modern level of choice is to prioritise. And this is where music consumption becomes personal – when we apply our own priorities to it. I’m thinking beyond prioritising the tools you use to discover music, though. Yes, we all will choose our favourite filters and content brands. Some of us will use Spotify to stream (for as long as we are blessed with it!), some will like to play around with Pandora or Last.fm until they perhaps get bored with those.

Less and less of us will buy a slew of CDs each week though, as these other tools present far cheaper, less risky and more convenient access points. But the new filters won’t help that much in terms of enjoyment. They’ll help filter through the dilemma of discovery – like Oysters. They’ll insure us against the hype and against the great swindle of the CD age – album filler. But they will not help us really enjoy our music listening.

To get return on investment from music, you need to invest - mostly time, but sometimes money helps, since when you buy something, you naturally give it at least some time to bed down. With current filters, you don’t need to make a financial commitment to hear most new music. But when I'm streaming the latest new release - just to gut it - it perhaps doesn't feel quite as it should, experience wise.

Would you rather listen to your favourite song 100 times or 100 songs once?

With the oversupply of music, the currency of music isn’t so much the format – CDs, downloads, streams, plays etc. – but time – how much time we have to listen and what we choose to listen to in that precious time. Since this is personal to every consumer, I’ll share with you here my own conclusions about music consumption, and my own set of priorities from now on.

The days of frequent flutters on Amazon & Play.com are done – just don’t make sense. It’s not so much a question of price, or quality - there is not enough time to give those records the proper listening they required to really enjoy them. It just results in a greater pile of albums that you never really get to know. Subsequently, very few new titles get added to your classic albums collection, most just drop into landfill.

From now on my music enjoyment is prioritised, not by payment method, or by format, but by the type of music it is. Until further notice, the following basic ‘system’ applies to my listening hours, in priority order:

1. The back catalogues of my recently discovered favourites. These include Spoon, Death Cab for Cutie and I am Kloot. For these, I know I’ll get great return on investment, so I’ll be buying these catalogues on CD. It will be an infrequent Amazon splurge. I won’t preview these on Spotify if I can help it, as I don’t need any reason to doubt the ability of these records to grow on me over time and with repeated listening.
   
2. Play all the classics at least once a year. No financial outlay required, just time. I’m of an age where if I don’t make this decision now, I’ll literally run out of time to enjoy Autoamerican by Blondie, Achtung Baby by U2, Seven by James, Stories From The Sea by PJ Harvey and the 100+ other titles I consider my own personal classics. They need to played once a year and that is going to take maybe 80 hours of listening time. That leaves no more room for Amazon splurges.


3. Listen to more music that’s ‘different’. Oh the wonders of specialist music labels like Nonesuch, ECM and Real World – labels I am undertaking right here & now to give more of my precious time to, whatever it is they might bring my way. Nonesuch just introduced me to Bill Frisell. ECM has fallen victim, temporarily, to my change in priorities, but will come ‘round as things settle down. Real World has blessed me with the music of Spiro – which has rightly received the heavy-rotation treatment in recent weeks at the expense of everything else. It might even be a modern classic. I want to give more time to alternative genres for so many reasons, not least I want my three daughters to grow up hearing music from all over the world, not be confined to western pop. Label brands come into their own in times like these and there will be case studies featured on this blog in future on the labels I think work on this level. I guess this will be a combination of streaming & buying, and for these labels I will maintain a direct relationship - on the mailing list, basically.


4. Give the old masters more time. It’s getting tight now, timewise. I don’t really know the catalogues of Dylan, Leonard Cohen or Springsteen, beyond the obvious handful of songs. I suspect their stuff is worth some investment though. It has to be – everybody in the world says so. I have in my current collection best-of’s by all of these - that'll be where I start. There are so many classics to discover, that anything I've seen live or in a different context will get immediate priority. So Crosby Stills & Nash for example, I’m suddenly interested in after their superlative display at Glastonbury. I have just invested in some Peter Gabriel catalogue after seeing him at WOMAD. and I'm listening to Ry Cooder after seeing him at The Lyceum last month. Another late great discovery for me personally. These classic artists are shouting loud and clear ‘We Can No Longer Be Ignored’.


5. New stuff when the hype has settled. And so here we are. New music has been re-prioritised out of sheer necessity. It’s not that I won’t listen to new music, I always will. I’m the guy so many people rely on for recommendations after all. But I’ll struggle to recommend anything brand spanking new from now on, because for me it needs to earn its place in my ears. I’m tempted to buy new records all the time, but I’ll happily wait until the hype has settled and time has done its work. I don’t see much point in investing in artists that won’t last, since I enjoy going on a journey with the artists I like, seeing how their work progresses, evolves or changes direction. It’s the pleasure and privilege of being a Radiohead fan, for example, even if that can also frustrate from time to time. And here is where Spotify comes into its own – I can take my time and work my way through new release without spending a fortune. Whether or not this is good business for the industry I doubt, but it works for me.

For me, music discovery has always been a search for the next addition to the classics – the next record that has the power to literally become part of my life, part of me. With 40 years of listening behind me and hopefully at least 40 more to go, it’s time to apply a strategy to ensure I get to discover, hear and enjoy as much music as possible that has the potential to become a personal classic. The ephemeral stuff can pass me by, I just don't have the time. If it’s too good to miss, something or someone will alert me to it, I hope.

I’m always vaguely excited about forthcoming music and for the next few months, that would be The Arctic Monkeys, Portico Quartet, Laura Veirs and my new favourite band I Am Kloot. There's nothing better than discovering artists late, when you can catch up on back catalogue at leisure, as with reading all the novels of a great author you just found out about. I love that serendipity and hope that will always be part of my music discovery. More to come on that next...

The new way to listen to music – self-imposed scarcity

This week I finally received my copy of Spoon’s GaGaGaGaGa (snappy title guys) from Amazon. It was one of those where Amazon undertakes to get it for you not from its own warehouse, but from some tiny shop in a small mid-west American town what has one of the two last remaining copies on the planet (why is this album so unavailable?). Subsequently it’s taken about eight weeks to arrive.

In fact, I ordered it shortly after writing the ‘Music Discovery, Spoon Fed’ post back in mid-April. Have I minded? Yes I have, a bit. Of course I wanted to hear it, was dying to. But I’m a patient guy. I dipped into Spotify of course, as one does. Not there. Spotify has ‘Gimme Fiction’ by Spoon and I streamed that. (Quick aside: Spotify has got approximately one in every three albums I search for – are my tastes becoming so obscure?). Last.fm didn’t have GaGa either (let’s use the short version). At this point I can’t get to hear it, basically, and I’m thinking, that’s a savvy move by Spoon. Maybe they know I’m a fan since I connected with them on Daytrotter.com. More chance of me becoming a lifelong fan if I buy rather than stream GaGa. If I’d streamed it, like I did with Gimme Fiction, maybe I’d still be considering buying it, in a somewhat non-committal fashion, like I am with Gimme Fiction. Yes I realize I could easily get it from Bit Torrent etc. but I’m not that kind of music fan.

As it is, not only have I bought it, but patiently waited for two whole months to finally hear it. Now here’s the punchline though (no it’s not that the record was released in 2007, though that’s true). It was well worth the wait. It’s sooooo gogogogogood. This album is the best thing I’ve heard in about three weeks – only because I’ve been listening to a very high standard recently – stay with me.

Having been denied GaGa during the overlong Amazon source-pick-pack-ship process, I subjected the album to the 'New Way I Listen to Albums' treatment. This is basically what music journalists used to call ‘heavy rotation’. I first gave it an initial late-night spin on the CD player, through headphones. I was immediately impressed. Next morning I ripped it into iTunes and played it back over & over for at least 2-3 days. I was commuting into town and so I got through the record from start to finish at least 6-7 times in this initial period, becoming familiar with the sequencing, certain lyrical couplets starting to connect with me in a very relevant sort of way.

Then as the week progressed I had the chance to get it on the stereo through the speakers (B&W 686’s, I love ‘em). It sounded ACE. The opening track blew me away, just the sound of it. Spoon can play, no question, but it was more the production that blew my mind. Whoever produced this record knew exactly what they were about. The second track is 'The Ghost Of You Lingers' and you might already know how I feel about that track from the earlier post. This was the first time I’d heard the studio version, properly. It is one of the best things I’ve ever heard. I will keep coming back to this track forever.

But here’s the thing – the album just gets better and better from there. After ‘Ghost’ which is a really heavy, almost disorientating listen, the mood lightens wonderfully with ‘Cherry Bomb’ which is just a great, great pop song. Pop, pure & simple, with a nice brass ensemble – lovely touch. Very uplifting. I can’t exactly go on like this track for track, so to cut a long story short, it dawned on me that the album format will never die, ever, thanks to records like this. Because what takes a great album is much more than a collection of songs.

The songs have to be good of course. There isn’t a single filler track on GaGa, it simply ebbs & flows brilliance throughout. So songs, tick. Production, tick. The playing is phenomenal – great musicianship. The rhythm section especially. Tick. The track sequencing is just great, so you don’t skip tracks or shuffle or even want to turn it off until it ends. Each song amplifies the next and when you become familiar with it, you simply look forward to hearing the next song. Even the album sleeve is intriguing – some artist at work on a major ‘installation’ and a collage of burlesque-like ladies on the back. Good shot of the band on the inside (I still don’t like it when you don’t get a band portrait, which is common on indie releases for some reason). It’s all just a fabulous ‘in the zone’ thing. And it’s not even a concept album! (I’m partial to concept albums, future post coming).

Now on the business side, who knows? I know I couldn’t get hold of it here, but my understanding is that in the US, Spoon have slow-burned their way to a reasonably successful commercial career. All their previous records have got very decent reviews and Spoon's Wikipedia entry seems to describe a nicely escalating commercial success with each successive release. Damn right too.

So how come it’s only the best album I’ve heard in three weeks. Well, it’s because I’ve had a really good run lately. This is down to good taste (sorry to be modest), good choices and luck I guess. But I recently bought John Vanderslice latest album Romanian Names. Don’t get me started with this one. Also brilliant. Why did this record get ignored by the UK music press? I didn’t see one single review. It’s awesome, ticking every box like the Spoon record, and with Vanderslice’s talent for evoking mysterious little stories within his songs.

The track ‘Too Much Time’ has become my theme tune. The lyrics are the best I’ve heard in ages ("freedom is overrated" etc.). Again, I subjected it to the new listening method, finding that I didn’t want to listen to anything else that week I was enjoying Romanian Names so much, just wasn’t interested in anything else. And the production on that record is amazing. The acoustic guitar ‘solo’ on ‘Fetal Horses’ says it all.

Finally, the exact same thing happened with another recent catalogue purchase (part of 2 for £10 in HMV this time) – Death Cab For Cutie’s ‘Plans’. The most recent record was in my top ten last year anyhow, but Plans is better. Again, it’s a completely successful album, creatively speaking. Songs (those fabulous Ben Gibbard lyrics), musicianship (bassline & drum combo on 'Summer Skin'), production, sound, sequence. Once again, it’s all there, meticulously and beautifully executed, for our listening pleasure.

Give it a try. Put the temptation to stream every new over-hyped record-of-the-day on Spotify to one side for a week or so and try my new method. Make one album the soundtrack to your life for at least one week and see what happens. It’s addictive actually.

I’ve spent my whole listening career basically searching for the next breakthrough record for me – the next life-affirming set of songs that you can call on and rely on as a resource – come rain or shine. But I reckon they’re harder to find these days, what with the sheer number of releases (of pretty good sounding records, mind). You just have to pick them out, buy them (even if you have to wait a while for them to arrive) and then ignore everything else for a while. Create your own scarcity, basically. It works.


Footnote: Now it’s obvious I’m a fan of a certain genre here - American Indie I suppose, though I prefer to call it ‘sophisticated pop’. In a discussion with Conrad Lambert last week (just about my favourite European artist, aka Merz) we talked about why this sophisticated pop genre is so dominated by American bands. For example I also love Wilco, Laura Viers and Sparklehorse. I like Nada Surf, Silversun Pickups and The National. And there are really strong new bands like The Local Natives et al. – this music in abundant in America. Basically, it’s the size of the country I guess. There doesn’t seem to be a UK equivalent scene, unless I’m missing something. The best UK record I’ve heard this year so far has been Madness’s Liberty Of Norton Folgate! Blur is back though, and of course, our National Treasures The Arctic Monkeys. Make do I suppose.

Music discovery Spoon fed, courtesy Daytrotter

Do you ever become utterly gripped by just one song? This one song becomes your adopted theme tune of choice, pushing aside all other songs in your current consciousness. More than that, the song seems to be a perfectly apt soundtrack – a response, to just about everything that happens to be going on in your life. You literally can’t get the song out of your head and don’t want to, necessarily.

That’s happened to me very occasionally and it happened all last week. The song is by Spoon and it’s called “The Ghost of You Lingers”. It’s from their last album Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, though I only just came across it.

This track has infected me. There’s something strangely compelling about it – the way it pulses nervously, urgently along (the keyboard on the track is used as a rhythm instrument, which is a sound I have always been attracted to). It’s experimental in structure, but melodic too – nearly all of the melody supplied by the vocal. I don’t think I could ever get bored of listening to this track. It is however, a bit menacing – it’s an anxiety trip – especially with some weird interference sound buzzing towards the end (this is what first caught me ear with the track).

The lyrics and the music could not be any more together. And the lyrics are to a pop song what Pinter prose is to a play. There’s something mysterious going on with this song. The singer’s voice is concerned, reflective. The lyrics are a riddle:

Put on a clinic till we hit the wall
Just like a sailor with his wounds being salted
Come on
I had a nightmare nothing could be put back together
Would you settle the score?
If you were here
Would you calm me down?
The ghost of you lingers
It lingers
And I always think about it

A little detailed so far I know, but stay with me. A little cursory interweb research unveils the impact on the world of “Ghost of You Lingers” and it is not insignificant. A (what looks like an unofficial art) video for the track is approaching 111k views on YouTube. But on the band’s current Myspace page, the track clocks up over 635k plays – and has over 470k on Last.fm - so plenty of web activity around this track.


Daytrotter - new music, timeless values

But I didn’t discover the track on these titans of web music real estate. I found it on Daytrotter.com. And Daytrotter has amazed me these past few weeks I can tell you. I first came across it after reading about it in Chris Salmon’s ‘Click-to-Download’ column in the Guardian’s Music & Film supplement.

The concept is beautifully simple. Band’s drop by The Horseshack studios in Rock Island, Illinois (while passing through on US tours) and record a 4-5 track session – usually new or recent material – sometimes un-released songs. The session tracks are offered as free MP3 downloads and the site itself is funded through banner advertising (it wouldn’t be right somehow for audio ads to be part of this set up).

Now I’m pretty late to this party. Daytrotter has been going since 2006 and with the frequency of one band every day, has amassed an impressive session archive – all of which is still available for download. I have been like a kid let loose at the pick ‘n mix counter the past couple of weeks raiding this archive. It’s hard to distinguish which sessions are best – that depends on your tastes. But if it’s any help at all, I have listed below my favourite ten songs I’ve been living with lately from the Daytrotter sessions, including the Spoon song.

[Btw, you'll have finished with the YouTube Spoon clip now, so click on the Daytrotter radio player on the right to stream Lonely Dear - number 2 in my Daytrotter session top ten].

I don’t often gush about individual music services on the JB blog so now to the justification to do so with Daytrotter. Daytrotter isn’t just another music blog. It’s done with such care, and so nicely wrapped in its own indie music ethos, it’s immediately attractive for fans of this type of music. And it’s sticky as hell - I just can’t stop dropping by on the site to see who has recorded a new session. It’s marvellous for real, lasting discovery and connection – I’ve found Spoon, Ingrid Michaelson and The Local Natives on there and I suspect I will listen to a lot more by each of them and many others.

The sessions themselves are quite something. I’m not really one for live session content, but something about the setting or the atmosphere or something definitely rubs off on the artists who record for Daytrotter. They seem to put in real performances and the sessions sound great – warm and capturing plenty of subtleties in the music – credit to both the artists and to the studio's sound engineers. These are so much better than your run-of-the-mill promo-circuit radio show sessions where the artist just shows up and plays with half their usual players or equipment and then have to suffer the DJ concluding with a cringe-worthy “that was just fantastic” (awkward moment of radio silence follows).

In short, the recordings made here are well worth the effort in downloading, listening and keeping. I’ve talked a lot in this blog about how the music industry desperately needs new content brands – nicely curated, edited and presented – in a way we the fans come to know, love and trust. I can think of very few that have so far emerged in the digital music space so far.

I wrote about Lost Tunes last month (which won a Music Week award last week, congratulations). I’ve featured Calabash-Mondomix as well. Pitchfork certainly qualifies these days as do a number of the more established music blogs (though these lack a substantial archive). Such music editorial brands are so few and far between however.

But Daytrotter is my new favourite music brand. I can’t see me getting bored of something so lovingly put together and superbly well executed. It’s so simple. Not only is the music great, but the editorial features written by founder Sean Moeller are briefly diverting and fun to read. A strong voice that’s never dull, and sure does justice to its quirky and individual subjects. The other aspects to the site work fine too – a radio player, some video, a cartoon strip, a merch shop. And it’s all beautifully signatured by Johnie Cluney’s highly attractive artwork. Everything about it smacks of an effortless (and perhaps even accidental) focus.

And in this focus is a great model for all of the endless technology-driven music services that show up week in week out and mostly, depart quietly sometime later by the rear exit. Being a valid, lasting contributor to the changing face of music discovery doesn’t have to mean a gargantuan library with all the music ever made, or the latest whizz bang recommendation engine that can rip that library apart with an algorithm.

Put some thought into it. Think about your audience, think about your artists, and think about how you can add real value to their needs in connecting. Word of mouth will do much of the rest.

I’d love to see Daytrotter move up to a gallop, perhaps syndicating its content onto the bigger music or ISP platforms so desperate for character development. But the Daytrotter crew aren’t as consumed by ambition as I am. By e-mail I asked Sean Moeller what his longer-term ambitions for the service are. His response was “long term goals are just to continue doing what we're doing really”. Once again, focus.

My top ten digital tracks from the sizeable archive:

1. Spoon. “The Ghost of You Lingers”.
2. Lonely Dear. “I Was Only Going Out”. (embedded for your listening pleasure).
3. The Maccabees. “Precious Time”.
4. The Local Natives. “Airplanes”.
5. Aimee Mann. “Little Tornadoes”.
6. Spanish Prisoners. “Mantequilla”.
7. Ingrid Michaelson. “Breakable”.
8. Death Cab For Cutie. “Styrofoam Cup”.
9. Foals. “Jam (Figure#3)”.
10. Deerhunter. “Dr. Glass”.

A cure for industry breakdown - Elbow grease

I just checked on Elbow's UK sales for The Seldom Seen Kid, which have just cruised past the 500k mark. When I first posted on Elbow's momentum and the contributing factors to it back in September, sales had just past 150k. But Fiction boss Jim Chancellor confidently suggested the album would reach platinum. I believed him. I suggested an arena or two might be in the offing at last? It was in plan said Jim – and was signed, sealed and delivered with aplomb at their triumphant Wembley show a couple of weeks back (my music mistake of the year so far: not attending that show).

At that time the band had just won the Mercury Music Prize, so platinum sales and arena shows looked very much on, but even Chancellor probably wouldn't have bet on a Brit, which the band won in February. And so, Elbow was resurrected from a languishing obscurity. Their wonderful, but very 'unpop' Seldom Seen Kid Album has become popular (let's not overdo it, The Seldom Seen Kid ranked 35th best-selling album for 2008, though is by far the most 'progish' repertoire on that list) and will probably tick-over into double-platinum (UK sales of 600k) at some stage this year.

This is all great of course, with the band themselves and Garvey in particular, seemingly able to enjoy their long-awaited success with a lovely humbleness – basking in it without melting in it, and at the same time none of the awkward embarrassment that can often come when 'indie' bands break into the mainstream. When Garvey says “it's been good being me of late” on his 6 Music show (if you haven't discovered it yet, do, it's a genuine radio gem) it comes across as genuine appreciation.

Better than great in fact, Elbow's success is refreshing. The sometimes cynical UK music press has launched no backlash at all, not a hint of it. Instead, just continued good will. I've yet to come across one hard core Elbow fan to reel from their mainstream success. Maybe in these hard times, a little glory to the underdog is simply appreciated. Of course, the whole episode is underpinned by sheer quality. Listening to “Grounds For Divorce” and “Weather To Fly” this week, those two tracks are still revealing new qualities to me now, 18 months after first hearing them, and listening to them lots.

Elbow's success is now widely recognised and often referenced. In reviews for new releases by Starsailor, Doves and The Hours (all of which are very good records) you'll find obvious references to Elbow as unlikely but welcome trailblazers. I've been thinking though, could Elbow's success have a greater significance for the music business itself? It has certainly lifted the mood (as well as raised the stakes) in many record label marketing camps for other indie bands. In these hard times that is much appreciated. Perhaps there is now room for a bit of confident swagger in the way the campaigns for these records are executed. People really want this stuff! And there's no doubt The Seldom Seen Kid has nicely created a public appetite for more of it.

Being both fun and serious and about it, Elbow's success has scratched some very stubborn itches that have plagued the ailing record business for quite a while:

• Labels: Think the 18 month long album campaign is dead in the age of immediacy and music-streaming-file-sharing ubiquity? Not necessarily - The Seldom Seen Kid


• New bands: Can you survive in the cut & thrust of today's ruthless business, with one or two album deals and at best, three-strikes-before-your out? You just might – Elbow


• Old bands: In the hole? Sales & audiences falling despite delivering your best work? Past your prime but not past your best? Do carry on – Elbow!


• Fans: Think the age where you go to a gig and hear a charismatic front man not only talk between songs, but actually say something entertaining and informative (possibly to you directly?) are sadly gone? No! - Guy Garvey – man of the people and master of audience participation


• Music press, retailers: Think bands that don't erm, scrub up too well, will struggle to find a large audience through mainstream media? Not always – Elbow!


• Everybody: Think a complex, melancholy 'unpop' record can't become a mainstream blockbuster hit? Wrong – The Seldom Seen Kid


• Everybody: Think a band with a terribly dull name will struggle to catch on? Wrong – Elbow! (okay, there's also Coldplay, Oasis etc.).

But where does Elbow go from here? What's next? Obviously there's the question of America and subsequent global super-stardom. What about Elbow The Movie? Personally I would love to see something done in the spirit of Wilco's “I'm Trying to Break Your Heart” or “Ashes of American Flags”. I'll be there for the theatrical release and the DVD, and the coffee table book.

Probably best of all, this band of 18 years in the making, that have worked blood, sweat & tears and must have been several times on the brink of throwing in the towel, is currently writing a new album and no doubt, will make several more after that. That way, they don't miss out on anything and nor do we. At least something in the music business is working.