Pretty Goes with Pretty

Remember the OC, Bitch

I'm a little behind in all things internet lately, but I did get a chance over the weekend to read Nitsuh Abebe's excellent overview of the decade in indie rock over at Pitchfork. It's a terrific read, surveying the various ebbs and flows of the decade in a fairly succinct yet broad (and entertaining) way. As I've tentatively dipped my toe into my own iTunes library in prepartion for some kind end-of-decade rundown (something I probably won't actually post until later in the fall), it really dawns on me what a challenge that really is. With that difficulty in mind, Abebe acquits himself quite well, not only reminding us of a few trends we might sooner forget (or wish to revive) but also illustrating how what's called indie rock these days has nuzzled up to more mainstream audiences. I'll spare you too much of my own assessment as I think Abebe gets it pretty much right.

The only thing I'd highlight that Abebe neglected is a little television show called The OC, which happened to debut in fall 2003, just before the boom year in indie rock that was 2004. The show was really a watershed for indie rock in the 00s—not because it brought indie to the mainstream, but because it brought the mainstream to the indie set. While it may not have been the first show to feature, subtly or not, musical acts either in the plot or on its soundtrack, The OC was the first to really embrace the indie sound of the era—Bloc Party, Death Cab for Cutie, the Walkmen, etc. Pitchfork would report it as news in a "gosh, wow, awesome!" kind of way—and it was, gosh, wow, kind of awesome to see the Walkmen make a bona fide appearance on a prime time TV show. It's not like MTV still had its pied-à-terre in the Alternative Nation, so where else were they supposed go?

For that matter, it's not like these bands' fans were necessarily buying their records. (Hello, dawn of the filesharing era.) Cries of sell-out in the last decade really dwindled to an occasional grunt—during The OC's commercial breaks, when that Outback commercial would come on—largely because fans and artists alike kinda figured out that the income options, slim as they already were for indie acts, were narrowing even more. So when Seth Cohen comes a-calling—he of the skinny frame and nice sweater, possessing an honorable awareness of manga and indie films, not to mention dashing out a self-deprecating charm and ego-less sarcasm—well, a lot of indie bands thought maybe it was about time they got in bed with this kind of thing.

Then they got paid. So when Grey's Anatomy dialed their number a couple years later, they picked up on the first ring.

But as an indie dick it's still easy to scoff at a show like Grey's Anatomy, which really only wants a ballad charmless enough to stay out of the way of the dialogue, or literal enough so that when the chorus comes in it narrates the action—"How to Save a Life!" Get it? They're medical interns! Then there's the groaner of the decade, that film set in New Jersey about vaguely depressed Shins fans. I don't even need to quote it—the point is it makes you angry; it almost makes you hate the Shins for being a part of some kind of cultural zeitgeist. That's a terrifically old-school indie rock reaction, one I admit I still let out every so often even when my maturity tells me I ought to can it. Yet The OC doesn't really elicit that reaction. Why not? Why was it basically okay for bands to have walk-ons on that show? Why did the producers' ploys to debut tracks from the new Beck album actually cause people to tune in, even when they could just suss out an album leak that day or the next? Why, of all bands, did Clap Your Hands Say Yeah—the most famous DIY band of the decade (not counting the other one)—reject the show's overtures in fears of being labeled sell-outs, only to become a punchline, a band that supposedly got too big too fast? (Did they get penalized by their fans for not making deals with labels? For not licensing songs to the right outlets and validating their worth in the marketplace?)

So where does that leave us? Well, for one thing it leaves a lot of indie bands—a certain kind of indie band, as Abebe is right to discern—hitting the pop charts and making it onto soundtracks for films about young, shampoo-less vampires. Bad thing, good thing, I can't really say. I'll only point out that I find it a little strange to see people on the web get way stoked about the New Moon soundtrack. Is it a validation of their tastes? I don't think so. If I were to make that charge I'd bet the response would be "Who cares what it's for? It just looks like a great collection of songs by my favorite bands so I want it." Okay, fair enough, though there was a time that punk and indie fans did care what it was for. Meanwhile, when films that seem actually marketed toward the indie sensibility—Seth Cohen 2.0?—I tend to see those films met with skepticism by many in the indie crowd. Good on the indie rockers, I guess, for recognizing that they're being marketed to (or exploited?) when films starring scrawny Pixies fans come their way. You can have your Nick & Norah, your 500 Days of Summer, your Juno—I won't have my identity sold back to me!—but can someone let me know when that New Moon soundtrack leaks?

What's the right business model for an indie band? What's the wrong one? What should indie fans tolerate? What should they not? Does being an "indie fan" even mean anything today other than trawling for leaks and bitching about Pitchfork album scores? Honestly I don't know. I only sense that there is a disconnect happening on both sides.

Let's Not Be Assholes

The news of the day today was that the new Grizzly Bear had leaked—three months before its official release date and apparently of a quality substantially below what the band intends. This post at Idolator, in which people were actually asking Grizzly Bear's Ed Droste outright if he would point them to the link for the leak, or better yet be a sport and leak a higher-quality version, was the most entertaining thing I'd read about it all day, though also the most depressing.

Back in December when the Animal Collective album had yet to leak there were similarly entitled claims, appeals, and threats related to a stupid rickroll that got out of hand. In both cases the moral of the story is this: don't tease indie rock fans. We deserve our music when we want it, without payment. We place no value on a musician's artistry. Albums have become like bounties one can collect on, holding them up and shouting to the masses "LEAKAGE!"

I'm sick of it. It's gotten to the point that it's just... gross. And sad.

I'm not innocent. Though I've never been to a bittorent site or downloaded a full album prior to its release, I have hunted down individual mp3s, often amounting to a full album, through places like Hype Machine. I don't acquit myself of anything. I will say: I've never pointed other people to a full-album download for a record that hasn't come out yet. I've always felt like that was kind of a dick move.

Anyway, the point is, whether I've participated or not, I've typically accepted that that's just the way it is these days. Leaks happen. People get excited and it's there so they download it. But then two weeks ago Touch & Go essentially went out of business. And a bunch of people who care deeply about music—independent music—were laid off as a result. A bunch of smaller labels that depended on T&G's distribution aid were left to figure something else out. It might be too soon, but could some of those smaller labels go belly-up as a result of this?

It sucks! And sure, you can be cynical about it and see nothing new under the sun here—the current climate of downloading is ruining record labels big and small, yawn. And Animal Collective's album leaked but they also hit #13 on Billboard in their first week of release (selling a whopping 24,000 copies... see, it's still sad). And Grizzly Bear may well hit a similar mark. But come on: think about a label like Touch & Go, one of the most venerable indie labels of all time. It's all but gone now. And we're all a bunch of assholes for helping them toward their ruin. You think they'll be the last? You don't have to be the douche twittering in Ed Droste's face to be complicit in all this.

 Chill on the Grizzly Bear and all those other records. Just let them come out when they're supposed to. And if the leaks are out there, don't be the asshole who flashes the big blinking arrow. Let the bands retain a little control over how and when their art is consumed—and for god's sake give them some money. Hype don't pay the bills, bitches.

I'm just a little tired of it all. I feel like someone's parent right now, lecturing on a subject you've been lectured about a million times before. All I ask is you just think a little about what hunting down a leak is all about—or worse, offering a leak to others. You're being an asshole.

The Height of Industry, the Height of Music

Todd Martens at the LA Times writes A Brief History of the Album's Recent Decline in Value, if you can handle yet another article on music industry woes. It's actually pretty interesting, looking specifically at how the industry has determined price points in the past. It's a reminder that the majors really were getting away with murder in the 80s and 90s, upcharging at pretty outlandish percentages. Martens also makes a point I've made in the past--namely that the industry crippled itself well before Napster ever came along. He writes:

The effect of Napster and the rise of file-sharing on the music business is probably a bit overblown. If one wants to trace the recent woes of the music business to a starting point, 2000 is arguably as good as place as any. It was in 2000 that the Federal Trade Commission declared that consumers had paid about $480 million more than they should have for CDs over the previous three years.

The cause, according to the FTC, was minimum-advertised-pricing, or MAP, policies, which the major labels had adopted to put an end to heavy discounts at music retailers. With MAP in place, retailers that sold CDs below a certain cost, say $12.99, would not receive cooperative advertising funds from record labels (the practice of reimbursing a retailer for advertising costs, such as featuring an album in a Sunday advertisement distributed in newspapers).

With the FTC breathing down its neck, and consumers rightfully fed up at continually seeing $16.98 CDs, the major record labels acquiesced to the FTC, and abolished MAP. A large retailer could now receive funds for advertising a new Madonna album, and then use said Madonna album as a loss-leader, altering what a new album should cost in the minds of the consumers.

Bill Wyman at Hitsville elaborates:

That opened the door for the big box retailers to start using CDs as loss leaders, which was the first, crippling shot at the foundations of the nation’s traditional record store infrastructure, and ultimately saw the closing of everything from hundreds, if not thousands, of neighborhood stores to, in the end, mighty Tower.

Wyman also reminds us of the days, now one, two, three decades back, when list prices would rise steadily from year to year. Which makes me think that, in a way, the whole thing may just be starting over again. So we're at $.99 a song right now, and $1.99-$9.99 for a full-length. As the digital format continues to ascend as the format for music, I won't be surprised to see those costs start creeping up again. In the meantime the corporate labels will pare down considerably--in output, in staff, and perhaps in influence. While I don't wish layoffs on anyone, I think this will be a good thing in the end. Part of me feels like we're coming back around, in some sense, to the way things were in the 60s, when a guy like David Geffen lived down the street from the artists he was signing, and the number of cooks stirring the bands' pots was considerably smaller. Hearing stories of how bands would cut a 45 and in a small amount of time they'd hear it on the radio--something about that narrative really resonates with today's environment, whereas it seemed quaint or fantastical in the 80s or 90s. There's a part of me that suspects that part of the reason today's financial woes feel so crushing is because they follow the real abberration, which was the 90s zenith of record stores and big-box retailers and MTV and corporate-consolidated radio and a format (the CD) that was ideally suited to ripping off the kids (think CD-Singles, special packaging, baby boomer reissues, double albums released separately a la Use Your Illusion, and repackaged compilations like the NOW series). The further away we get from the 90s, the more insane the whole era really seems. It really was the height of the industry. Today's environment, conversely, could be the height of music. And in a few years time, perhaps the whole thing will even out to a more natural parity.

This is just a sketh of an idea, probably riddled with flaws, but: I think that kind of relationship between bands and their labels back in the 60s gets underplayed when we talk about "how great music was back then," how much creativity and experimentation was allowed by the labels at the time, at least in part because so few people really had stars in their eyes. It didn't last for long, I know. But I wonder if we're moving in that direction again; as the industry pares down and financial success--true jackpot-style success--becomes less and less realistic, perhaps the labels will take more and more creative and aesthetic risks with the artists they push.

We Sold Our Rock and Roll for Soles

Haven’t had a lot of time to blog this week, which is unfortunate because there have been a whole slew of posts elsewhere that I’d love to jump on. So before they become hopelessly old news, let me try to get in my reaction to a couple of Idolator posts from last week. Maura and the Idolator crew have really been on a roll the last couple weeks, by the way. These two posts are just the tip of the iceberg; hopefully I'll find time to respond to the four or five others I currently have bookmarked.

First there was the post on Insound’s Tip Jar, which takes a look at Insound’s—recently purchased by ADA, by the way, who are owned by Warner Music Group—Give More! Get More! program. The gist being that whenever you make a purchase at Insound, you have the option of tacking on a quarter which will be given to one of these bands, not unlike the way grocery store clerks ask you to give a dollar to cancer charities on checkout. Maura starts by quoting Glenn at Coolfer’s reaction to the charity program:

The implications of this program should seriously disturb indie rock fans. Charity is at complete odds with the very popular notion that the Internet is fueling a sustainable music middle class. Give More, Get More highlights music's Catch-22: record royalties don't pay the bills, but nearly all of them need record labels to get noticed.

Maura elaborates:

[P]rograms like this—and the fact that some of the bands being supported by this initiative are well-known enough that they can be considered part of the "much-blogged-about" musical class that is supposedly making the money it's losing from record sales back through the power of attention-generated cash—are a sign that the highly touted business models where touring is considered the way for newer bands to make money (or at least not lose a ton money on the recorded-music end of things) are probably a fool's game.

Both Glenn and Maura point to the reality that there really is no new (functioning) business model for bands, popular or otherwise. A commenter then wondered just how Insound picked these bands, cynically wondering whether there might be some company-biased shenanigans at work here. There might be some meat to that question—it’s true that Insound does not explain how it happened upon the six bands it’s choosing to support at this time—though the bottom line is that these are small-time bands who could use the money, so who am I to complain. If we really want to examine the intersection of indie rock and corporate unseemliness, better to start with this Idolator post, which came a day later, on Santogold’s comments about licensing her music to advertisers—which Bill Wyman at Hitsville called selling out and which Maura calls at best a "knotty issue." 

In light of the first post, which ably illustrates how difficult it is to actually make money via the more acceptably traditional methods (i.e., selling records and touring), it seems almost cruel to call out a musician in this day and age for licensing a song—especially when iTunes ads and well-placed Grey’s Anatomy scene-setting seem more likely to translate into actual record sales than airplay on radio or MTV.

Mike Barthel made a comment over at Fluxtumblr, in the context of a different conversation, that “the fact that a lot of music critics came out of hardcore, which is an unusual thing for a music fan, is really warping perceptions.” I think there’s a lot of truth to that, and cries of sellout in this day and age usually reveal those hardcore roots (which I myself have). That said, while I don’t think artists need worry about licensing as evil in and of itself, they are hopefully still vetting the corporations to whom they're licensing. Take Of Montreal’s much-debated Outback Steakhouse jingle. Tweaked lyrics or not, did you know that Outback gave almost $350,000 to the Republican Party in 2000, more than $400,000 in 2004, and their parent company OSI Restaurant Partners have given nearly $300,000 this year? Oh, and now-retired General Tommy Franks, who led the invasion of Iraq in 2003, sits on OSI’s board of directors. To me, that's the greater cause for concern. (Though it also amplifies Kevin Barnes's choice to not only license his song but to change the lyrics to fit the commercial—he really went the extra mile in aid of McCain's White House bid!)

That took me about ten minutes to dig up on the web. Curious to know if Barnes also checked up on who was paying him—or did he care? Maybe the need for a paycheck—a legitimate need—was too overwhelming. Who am I to say? It’s not even all about Of Montreal, and it would be a shame if that's all anyone took away from this post. Take the Santogold/Pharrell/Julian Casablancas Converse campaign: Converse is owned by Nike, who don't exactly have a stellar human rights record. That was a scandal of the '90s, so maybe things are different now—did Santogold check up? Just asking. Every band that is tempted by licensing should operate with caution. Bands get paid, sure, but that’s not the end of the food chain. The old cries of sellout don't really pack the whallop they once did, but that doesn't mean the corporate waters bands must navigate are any less murky.

This Ain't a Scene, It's a Comments Box Part II: Blood Sweat and Uploads

[Earlier, Part I]

Despite all I've said so far, something has obviously changed. I’d have to be an idiot to think the internet hasn’t had some influence on the way bands come up, and perhaps on the identities and sounds coming from different scenes. “Lord knows I'm no internet utopian,” Barthel writes, “but it seems strange to deny that there are real communities online. They may not be able to give each other haircuts or provide venues for bands to play, but none of that is necessary for vital art to happen.” Vital art, no. How about vital audience?

On the surface, the internet era seems like it should be tailor-made for bedroom stars—those kids who don’t take part in any local scene, simply uploading their work to the global audience that might find their MySpace page. That's the way the net gets idealized—whether by no-name bands looking for exposure, lonely bloggers looking to flex their influential muscles, or desperate major labels. But is that the reality? Is that really the era we now live in? Last week Ryan Catbird asked whether it was conceivable for small-time acts to follow the "new model" set by Nine Inch Nails and simply give their music away for free:

I still think the more important question is: “What if an artist that hasn’t already built a career on the label system released their work directly, gave it away for free, retained their rights, etc.  Would it matter?”

The answer, sadly, to that one is “no, it doesn’t matter.”  Myriad small unheard-of bands are out there posting their albums for free every day, but there’s still no good way for them to get heard.

For all the chatter about how new technology/Music 2.0/viral marketing etc. has the power to “break” new artists, there are precious few examples of this actually occurring. 

Catbird is right, but one needn't be cynical about the 2.0 scenario either. The fact is the business models for an arena-rocking megastar and a DIY band from Ohio have never been the same, not in the 90s and not today. The degree to which different revenue streams are available—whether through retail sales, touring, or licensing—is tied explicitly to one's audience. That's where a lot of bands, bloggers, and fans get mixed up when it comes to the internet: there is an illusion that the internet somehow holds the key to bypassing all the dues-paying, skipping straight to the career opportunities and adulation.

If your music bypasses Hank in your hometown but reaches Henri in Paree, where exactly does that get you? Aiming for the bright lights of internet stardom without honing your chops at home—and building a tangible, carbon-based following—is a chimera. Which is just to say that bands should log off and rock the old-fashioned way.

For that matter, bloggers should log off too. For those wondering why bloggers don't "break" the new hot shit band, here's a newsflash: the internet is not the ground floor. If you want to break a new band, go see a local show and find a band that's toiling away in your own obscure back yard. Why do bloggers think they need to sort through the desperate pleas for exposure in their email inboxes to find the right bands? Your inbox is not the scene.

Yet, sadly, there seems to be a danger that in fact that is the new scene. Not to put too dour a spin on it—Barthel is right to say that it's wrong to claim internet culture as "inauthentic"—but the national indie scene is beginning to shake down into the kind of singular social hierarchy that would usually define individual community scenes. Look, for instance, at last year's end-of-year lists, almost all of which, across the board, were identical. Maura Johnston, in a comment to her own post at Idolator last week, said this:

If anything a big part of my frustration with indie rock right now comes from the insularity that's bred by the ever-shrinking mass—it's so informed by itself and only itself that it's sometimes speaking a dialect full of really really boring words.

In other words, the variety of subcultures that has made indie rock so invigorating for two decades is currently getting a little vanilla, as the most popular tastemakers, whether based in New York or Chicago or Toronto or wherever, seem to be aligning their viewpoints, even if unintentionally. So if the blog culture is somehow consolidating all the music scenes of the country into one generic über-scene—to the point that it's novel to point out that No Age played shows at a dingy club that holds vegan potlucks—then it's time to start looking outside of that scene. As Barthel puts it,"the best and more enduring American indie bands of the 90s, if they were part of a scene at all, existed on the outskirts of that scene." And the outskirts of this scene is your scene. So log off and go see a show.

Follow-up posts:

• Who's Hyping?

This Ain't a Scene, It's a Comments Box Part I: Reading Brooklyn Vegan Is Not Going to a Show

Last week I pointed to Mike Barthel’s post Punk Grammar in the context of the band No Age. But in fact his post has almost nothing to do with the band and much more to do with the idea of local scenes and how they are perceived—or, more specifically, how relevant they are—now that the internet has rendered the idea of “local scene” quaint.

As Barthel and others (among them the New Yorker and Pitchfork) have made apparent, the phenomenon of No Age is indelibly linked to their origin in the L.A. scene surrounding the Smell. As far as No Age is concerned, I find the whole conversation a shade disingenuous—just as discussion of Vampire Weekend was less about their music than about their class issues and musical colonialism. It’s an excuse for us bloggers to talk about something more interesting than the music itself, yet throw a band’s name around in close proximity, blowing their importance as a musical entity out of proportion. (For the record: I’ve heard two songs by No Age and am ambivalent to them; I have no critique to offer their music.)

The common thread I’m picking up in all this discussion of the Smell seems to be how novel it is that a band can come from a living, breathing scene—as if the pre-MySpace/Hype Blog Era has existed for generations, and the idea of a band bolstered by its local fanbase is something to be nostalgic for; as if unearthing the Smell scene is somehow akin to anthropologists analyzing the tools of an ancient culture. Worse, I find it alarming that people are surprised that such scenes still exist. Amanda Petrusich, in her Pitchfork review of Nouns, writes:

To an outsider, the Smell is idealistic and romantic…. Save Baltimore's Wham City, it's been a while since American music fans have had a similar hometown scene to get riled up about; regional culture has been fractured and marginalized by the internet, and being too focused on anything local—except produce, maybe—feels depressingly provincial in 2008. Consequently, it's weirdly thrilling that a community-sponsored, community-supported art space can attract (and sustain) such a horde of admirable bands.

Barthel puts this in the context of what he calls “the myth of the 90s” (perhaps more accurately the mythologizing of the 90s). As to why No Age is the band garnering allusions to the bygone eras of local scenes—surely Wolf Eyes had/has its own venue in which to nurture its sound and audience?—Barthel rightly notes that it’s because they sound like they came from the 90s. It’s easier for music writers to therefore conclude that everything about them is 90s: they buy t-shirts at thrift stores! they eat vegan cupcakes! they… come from a close-knit music scene the likes of which (not counting Toronto or Stockholm or Brooklyn or Chicago or apparently Denton) haven't been seen since Seattle at its grungiest!

Are we so glued to our mp3 blogs, tour date aggregators, and bittorent sites that we’ve forgotten about local scenes? Should we believe all these bands we read about every day are born whole, without coming up from some sort of hometown scene? More likely, those of us who were twentysomethings in the 90s, taking part in scenes of “hardcore bands and community centers,” as Barthel puts it, are now the thirtysomethings who stay home and write blogs instead—forgetting that there are new twentysomethings going to those shows, starting their own DIY spaces, birthing the bands we’re writing about.

I think, quite simply, that many people out there are forgetting about and/or ignoring the importance of being a local band first, national act second. Also writing about No Age, Matthew Perpetua worried on the band's behalf:

I don't think No Age is a fully-formed band at this moment in time, and I worry that they might get screwed over/screwed up by Certain People overrating their juvenilia, whether it's out of genuine enthusiasm, or because it is beneficial to Those People's brand. This rarely works out—either the artist hedges their bets, and feels no need to progress, or they develop their skill and create better material, and the audience moves on to smothering some other inexperienced band.

This is a concern I've seen voiced on behalf of numerous blog-annointed bands (again, see Vampire Weekend): that maybe we shouldn't get so hot for their debuts; maybe we should let them mature first. Since we're treading around in 90s throwbacks anyway, I'd just like to ask: why start now? Slint put out two albums. Drive Like Jehu put out two albums. Rodan, one. Dare I mention Neutral Milk Hotel? The list goes on—either bands that were lauded on their debut and went on to have long careers (Pavement? Palace?) or bands that had tremendous influence but imploded before they could make three records. So No Age now has two records out—in indie parlance, that means they're ready for their close-up. Maybe in a year or two each dude will go on to form their own June of '44 or Hot Snakes.

I think the fear of letting a band get too big too fast, lest they stunt their growth, stems from a simple confusion: the internet is not a local scene. One needn't "worry" about a band's fragile trajectory, whether it's No Age or Vampire Weekend or the Dodos; they're probably further along than you realize.

Related posts:

• Part II: Blood Sweat and Uploads
• Who's Hyping? (May 20)

Anyone Can Sell a Product

Yesterday’s New York Times article, “Does This Latte Have a Funny Mainstream Taste to You?”, on Starbucks’ approach to selling music, was an interesting look at contemporary music business models, if a little misguided in its angle. The article, by Jeff Leeds, seems to claim that Starbucks has lost sight of its initial, more curatorial sensibility—daring to sell Alicia Keys and Paul McCartney instead of (then-unkown) Madeline Peyroux. As We Eat What We Like notes, who ever thought of Starbucks’ selection as “not mainstream”? Even when unfamiliar acts got prime counter space—anyone remember Antigone Rising?—I never really thought of Starbucks as going to bat for the little guy. Whatever its reputation is for being selective, I’ve never equated Starbucks with Oprah (or Pitchfork) in terms of rubber stamping quality approval.

So let’s put that argument aside, shall we? Because more interesting than what was being said in the NYT article was who was saying it.

For music fans, Starbucks initially conveyed “a promise that ‘we’re going to be bringing you something special, unique,’”

—let me just pause this quote for a second. Note Leeds’ attributing the feeling about Starbucks to “music fans”—

said David Sonenberg, a talent manager who has guided the careers of acts including the Fugees and John Legend, who had a CD carried by Starbucks.

“I don’t have the sense that there is any longer a culture and purpose to their musical endeavors,” said Mr. Sonenberg, who has had a dispute with the company over its handling of a new band, Low Stars. “It’s lost its sense of purpose.”

A second, anonymous “senior executive at one of the industry’s biggest labels” is also quoted, saying “They’ve lost that ‘event’ thing…. It would be like Oprah’s Book Club having 15 books a week.” Clearly this is not the case, as both Paul McCartney and Joni Mitchell released albums to great fanfare via Starbucks and Hear Music, each less than a year ago. In fact McCartney’s album release was nothing but an event.

It’s frankly curious, if not downright hilarious, to hear industry execs lament that a coffeehouse chain has lost its “sense of purpose” when it comes to selling music. The complaint, among other things, is that Starbucks now sells too many CDs at once—“as many as 20 CDs at a time.” Oh my! How will I navigate these crowded shelves? How will I trust the barrista to steer me to the right album—Radiohead or Sia?—tailored impeccably to my individual sensibilities?

What we’re experiencing here is sour grapes. McCartney, Mitchell, and even Kenny G are all on Hear Music, Starbucks’ label. In other words, for all the success the coffeehouse is having selling compact discs—tangible music product—very little of that money is going into “the music industry”; at least not to record labels or the media conglomerates that own them. The people in this article are watching a lot of money change hands—money they used to lay claim to.

This is the same industry that has become enslaved to big-box grocery stores selling their product as loss leaders in order to sell frozen peas and shower curtains, all while music retailers—Tower, Musicland, Virgin, never mind mom & pops—have shuttered their doors. According to a Rolling Stone article published last year, nearly 3,000 record stores have closed in the U.S. since 2003.

I’ve talked about this before (part I, part II). The major labels got in bed with Wal-Mart, one of the most ruthless business models to have ever existed, and Wal-Mart subsequently beguiled the music industry into an untenable situation. Major labels are beholden to big-box retailers’ massive purchasing power, to the point that when they don’t want the labels to offer competitors incentives, the labels buckle. (For instance, see this post I did last year, which recounted the way big-box retailers pressured labels to scuttle plans for a resolution with Napster.)

Right after linking to the Starbucks story yesterday, Idolator followed it up with a seemingly unrelated story about Wal-Mart (and Target, another big-box grocery store) exerting its influence against Pepsi, who was advertising Amazon’s new mp3 service on their packaging.

In an apparent response to retailers’ concerns, Amazon’s name has been banished from the front of Pepsi bottles carrying the promotion—rendering it invisible in supermarket aisles to passing shoppers.

This is the power we’re dealing with here. Wal-Mart (and Target and Costco et al.) simply has, in sum, too much real estate dedicated to selling Product X—Pepsi, Alicia Keys, whatever—for the makers of that product to say no to them. When it comes to the music industry, that means not giving other retailers properly competitive discounts or other incentives. And so Tower, Virgin, and all the other thousands of record stores, go kaput.

This brings us back to Starbucks, and all those sour grapes in the NYT article. There was a time when CDs were sold in CD stores. Given that, it made sense for artists to sign deals with CD manufacturers and distributors—record labels—in order to get their product into the proper store. Makes sense. I certainly wouldn’t sign a deal with an airline or a farmer to sell my music! But the record labels asphyxiated the record stores, choosing to land their products in grocery outlets instead. So there’s a new dynamic. Musicians, being the simpletons they are, have connected the dots—all two of them. “If my music is sold in a grocery store, I should make a deal with a grocer. If my music is sold in coffeehouse, I should make a deal with the coffeehouse. If my music is being downloaded outside of any bricks-and-mortar establishment, accessed directly by my fans, I should make a deal with my fans.” Thus Paul McCartney signs to Starbucks, the Eagles make an exclusive deal with Wal-Mart, and Trent Reznor makes a million bucks in a week by going straight to his fans.

It is that fucking simple. Music industry stops supporting music retailers; music industry destroys its own niche; music industry renders itself obsolete. If music is nothing more than a product, well fuck dude, anyone can sell a product. It’s business 101—it doesn’t matter what the product is, call it a widget. Now what was that about losing one’s sense of purpose?

Pitchfork's Apparent Conflict of Interest

Well, I really have to ask. First of all, thanks so much for the review. I was really very flattered about that. You know, I heard something about the "8.0 club" a long time ago. Oh You're So Silent got 8.6. Everyone kept telling me, "Oh, you're in the 8.0 club now," which was kind of intriguing to me because it literally means that all these festivals and all these distributors want to have your record. It sort of puts wheels in motion.

And then when I got this review [for Night Falls over Kortedala], I was like, "9.0? I wonder what that means." The day after, my frequent flyer card was updated from ivory to silver. I just wanted to check if you had something to do with that. I was thinking, "Oh, the 9.0 club"

                                —Jens Lekman, in an interview with Pitchfork

In regards to this interview with Pitchfork's Ryan Schreiber, in which Jim DeRogatis gives Schrieber a light grilling on the appearance of a conflict of interest between Pitchfork's role as a critical entity and their slew of commercial endeavors—web tv, video game soundtracks, concert promotion—Dan Weiss over at Kiss Out the Jams sums things up nicely:

It doesn't help that a lot of Schreiber's answers are "I don't know."

Whether or not their is a conflict of interest could be debatable, but as DeRogatis notes,

[O]ne of the things that you study in ethics class at journalism school is avoiding the appearance of a conflict of interest, which is different than actually having a conflict of interest. If I had written an authorized biography of the Flaming Lips, readers might question, “How do I know you really did the reporting and told us everything there is to know about this band—the good, the bad and the ugly—if you were financial partners with them and they were making a dollar from every book sold?” People have the right to ask that question.

Schreiber is able to duck the question, to a degree, because the main subject at hand—pitchfork.tv—is not the grossest example. Schreiber sees the upcoming video site as "a logical extension of the kind of journalism and features that we already do. It’s just a different format." There's no real quibbling with that, for the moment, since the site hasn't even launched. There's no reason to think a video-based ad-supported music site is entirely different from the current format.  One could raise the question of who's paying who to get the content on the site, but frankly I'm not that cynical—and judging by all those I don't knows, neither is Schreiber.

The video game soundtrack and the concert festival, however, seem a little more smarmy. When Pitchfork gives a band a great review and that band's cachet increases, to the point that Pitchfork then turns around and makes money off that band—not through ads supporting the Pitchfork brand, but through video game royalties or ticket sales based on the band's popularity, which Pitchfork had a hand in creating—that is what DeRogatis correctly points to as the appearance of a conflict of interest.

From Schreiber's point of view, it seems to be simple: they like the band first, therefore everything after is kosher.  I'm not completely sure it's that easy. Turning to a parallel critical avenue, Tyler Green at Modern Art Notes interviewed the Village Voice's art critic, Christian Viveros-Faune, a few months back. Viveros-Faune had a similar I don't know sort of attitude.

MAN: You're a managing director of a commercial art fair, Volta, and an organizer of another commercial art fair, Chicago's Next fair. At the same time you're a writer, a journalist, you're the art critic for the Village Voice. Why isn't that the most basic kind of conflict of interest?

Christian Viveros-Faune: I think essentially, because, I believe you can wear a lot of hats in the art world, and one needs to because, among other things, critics can't survive on the money that they make from writing. Very few critics can. And, not only that, but I'm interested in curating, and I firmly believe that there is no interest in the art world without a conflict of interest.

...

Can I curate an exhibition as an art fair for a company that will pay me money for it? You're damned right I can. Do I see a conflict there? No I don't, I see potential for a conflict, which is not the same thing. It's the same dilemma I have every day when I decide not take candy from a baby. One it's easier than it looks, and two it's just not done, it's unethical and uncivil. Decent, cool people don't do it, and that's that.

...

MAN: Have you considered what it says about you, about the Voice, about the state of the art world when someone holding one of the three major critical positions in New York City has hands in two different pots, both trying to be a journalist, to be a critic, while operating in the commercial side as well?

Viveros-Faune: Honestly, I thought it basically came with the territory. It's either that [conflict] or teaching. We're not nuns here.... I don't write about the market. Also, in case anyone has missed this detail: I no longer sell art work to anyone, which in my mind takes me out of the area of real conflict, period.

Within days, Viveros-Faune was fired from the Voice. From the Voice's official statement:

Christian assures us that the consulting work he is doing for those fairs does not conflict with anything he has written for us or would write in the future, and he has demonstrated to us that besides being an excellent and highly readable critic, he’s also a man of integrity. But we’re concerned that his work outside the Voice at least creates an appearance of conflict.

So how different is it when Pitchfork reviews bands on a daily basis and is promoting mega-festivals and having a hand in licensing songs for video games? When it comes to Pitchfork's various commercial endeavors, maybe there's not a conflict—in fact I really believe that Schreiber never considered it, because he just digs the bands so damn much.  But there is an appearance, and one that Schreiber would do well to address and stop I don't knowing about.

[Update: all of a day later I had to change the awkward title of this post. Also, I hope you're reading the comments.]

Radiohead & Eagles vs. Record Stores

Various blogs continue to marvel over the Eagles' effect on Billboard... why, again, is this interesting? I really feel like there's a different story to tell here. People talk about the dying "music industry" all the time, and when they do they usually mean the corporate record labels, who are apparently bleeding money. I've gone on record as frankly not giving a shit about the corporate labels--music, the artform, would be better served by smaller labels with clearer artistic outlooks.

But there's another casualty in the blanket term "industry": the record stores. Not just Tower and Musicland, which have already bitten the dust, not just Virgin either, but also the many mom-and-pop stores that are still alive. What's really weird, to me, is that given the state of the music industry, I actually equate the needs of both Virgin and the mom & pops. I just want to support those retailers that are first and foremost concerned with music.

That's why the Eagles thing pissed me off: that they would make such a destined-to-be-huge album exclusive to a retailer that has no actual interest in music. They deprived music retailers from making any sort of profit, apparently driving staff at Virgin and other stores to literally go to Wal-Mart and buy copies of the album so they could stock it. (I'm aware that that creates a weird disconnect to actual album sales and who's making what money). In principle, this Wal-Mart exclusive is a big middle finger to music retailers.

As I got all worked up about this, though, I realized something else: Radiohead did the exact same thing. There are huge differences in intent--I see the Eagles as being merely greedy, while Radiohead are actively trying to adapt to the changing climate--but the bottom line is that record stores were deprived of two of the biggest releases of the year, and surely they could have used the boost either release would have given them.

For now, I'm just throwing this out there. I think there is potentially a lot to say about this, including getting some feedback from actual record store owners or employees (Hypebot does have a quote from the head of the Coalition of Independent Music Stores). I welcome your two cents in the comments and/or at your own blog...

Dear Music Industry: I Said Go Motherfucking Die

Wow. Idolator has an interesting breakdown of why the Eagles' new album, which more than doubled the sales of Britney's debut, won't be acknowledged in the Billboard Charts.

More recently, around the turn of the millennium, a second rule was added--largely at the behest of the record-retailing community--removing from the chart any new album that is not generally available for sale to all stores. Call it "the Big Box rule": as more superstar acts decided to sell exclusive product through Wal-Mart, Target and Circuit City (and, more recently, Starbucks), Billboard declared that such albums would not be eligible for the big chart. (The rule was also practical, since some of these retailers wouldn't report sales of their exclusive albums to SoundScan, anyway.)

Idolator's post is eye-opening, but I'm not very interested in it from a Britney-vs-Eagles perspective. I'm more shocked and appalled that the Eagles sold SEVEN HUNDRED THOUSAND copies through ONE outlet: Wal-Mart.

Now, you know my feelings on Wal-Mart as it relates to the music industry (here is part I, and here is part II--tellingly subtitled "How Does it Feel to be Sam Walton's Bitch?"). Once again the industry has catered to a grocery store without regard for the retailers that actually want to support the music industry (Wal-Mart sure doesn't, if rumors are true that they'll be scaling back their music sections after the new year).

Who gives a shit whether Billboard recognizes that the Eagles outsold Britney? As Idolator points out, 700,000 copies is the second largest debut of the entire year, behind only Kanye. A new Eagles album, like it or not, is always a big deal--their freakin' greatest hits collection unseated Thriller as the biggest selling album of all time. And their label withheld the album from music retailers. This would be like Scholastic choosing to sell the new Harry Potter only at Costco. Record stores are dying, you fucking idiots! I'm sure they would welcome any boost the Eagles might provide, and you'd likely sell 700,000 copies anyway, pricks.

The Music Industry May Go Die After All

Idolator reports this morning:

Reports are surfacing that that the three stores that make up the bulk of CD sales right now--Best Buy, Wal-Mart, and Target--are planning to dramatically scale back their music sections after the holiday season, thanks to executives believing that the CD market is in "permanent decline" and that sales will drop even faster next year than they did in 2007. Cutbacks are expected to be in the 20% to 40% range.

Did I call it, or did I call it? Here's a small part of what I wrote back in July, in response to some articles blaming illegal downloads for the death of the industry:

The music industry’s lack of distinction between [Wal-Mart, Best Buy et al.] and Tower or Musicland had far more to do with their closing than illegal downloads ever could. Tower couldn’t compete with a store that doesn’t mind taking a loss on Avril Lavigne if it means you’ll buy your groceries while you’re there.... The industry is actively discouraging you from patronizing an actual record store.

...Tower’s demise signified one thing and one thing only—the music industry turned its back on music lovers long ago. They only care about Wal-Mart. But does Wal-Mart care about the music industry? No. They’re not interested in competing with iTunes and mp3s. When the plastic disc dies, it will fill its shelves with more deodorants and foot cream. Wal-Mart will roll on without so much as flinching. Just desserts for the music industry; the people who lose their jobs at Sony can go get work at Proctor & Gamble.

If you care to read more--among other things, about how Wal-Mart kept the music industry from making a deal with Napster years ago, thereby creating the filesharing environment we're currently in--read on:

• Dear Music Industry: Go Die, Part I: Cleanup on Aisle 7
• Dear Music Industry: Go Die, Part II: How Does it Feel to be Sam Walton's Bitch?

We're Best Friends As Long As You Don't Screw Me Over

A couple blogs have already pointed to Erik Davis's Beirut snafu—basically he was sent a digitally watermarked advance copy of the new Beirut album (by a tiny indie label, for whom this release will likely fund the rest of their year's releases), but he "accidentally donated it to a thrift store" where "someone else" leaked it to a p2p site. The label, thanks to the watermark, was able to trace the leak to Davis's copy, and they went on—almost immediately—to try and blackball Davis to other publicisists and labels.

There is a lot of bullshit to cut through here.

First all, Erik, I'm fairly certain you live in Los Angeles—please let me know which thrift store you use to dump your wares; I would love to collect your tablescraps. Secondly, by the way—what a lame excuse. Did the label really buy it? It could very well be true, but what a tough pill to swallow. (I'm also curious to know where the guy is that found it at the thrift store. He's obviously internet savvy; if it were me, I'd be posting on my myspace/blog/message board, "dude! I just fuckin' scored the new Beirut at a thrift store!!!!!")

Second, Davis correctly (if defensively) deflects the controversy back to the label: why are they coming down on the critics? The apparent vitriol cast on Davis is out of balance, and also smacks of the same misguided logic that led the majors to sue their fans. Promo distribution functions purely on the honor system, and there are far too many nameless, faceless freelancers out there for labels to expect strict adherence to the code of the advance copy—just look at the used bins in any record store for decades of evidence; advances are not typically treasured by their recipients. The watermark can put a face and name on those writers, but making them paranoid about playing the damn CD at all just doesn't seem the right way to go. Obviously album leaks are an issue, but other indies seem to be finding their way around them—e.g., Matador's Buy Early Get Now program, and Arts & Crafts making the Stars album available for download within days of its completion back in July. (The Stars album doesn't hit brick & mortar stores until the 25th of this month, so we'll see whether the tactic worked in a few weeks.) In both cases, the labels are putting their faith in the fans to spread the word of mouth (which always works better than a review in Spin or Entertainment Weekly, doesn't it? I'm asking—doesn't it?) Idolator's Maura Johnston—who I'm referencing twice in a week (but spelling correctly only once)—makes the additional point that indies are less dependent on long lead times since the most influential critics are web-based anyway. And let's face it: they're also fucking impatient. The prevalent climate today is to trumpet who's first, not who's best.

So what is the solution, then? I don't know, but if labels feel the need to be that proprietary (and understandably, they do), then they need to find a way to forego the honor system, which has frankly never worked; it's just more problematic today. Maybe they need to make advance access available via password-protected streams, forcing critics to—gasp!—listen to music while sitting in one place (preferably near some kind of writing tool) and not driving, running, flexing, or otherwise multitasking.

omg the music industry is full of like totally slimy little weasels!!!

I don't even know where to begin with this one.

Ms. Digby's simple, homemade music videos of her performing popular songs have been viewed more than 2.3 million times on YouTube. Her acoustic-guitar rendition of the R&B hit "Umbrella" has been featured on MTV's program "The Hills" and is played regularly on radio stations in Los Angeles, Sacramento and Portland, Ore. Capping the frenzy, a press release last week from Walt Disney Co.'s Hollywood Records label declared: "Breakthrough YouTube Phenomenon Marié Digby Signs With Hollywood Records."

What the release failed to mention is that Hollywood Records signed Ms. Digby in 2005, 18 months before she became a YouTube phenomenon. Hollywood Records helped devise her Internet strategy, consulted with her on the type of songs she chose to post, and distributed a high-quality studio recording of "Umbrella" to iTunes and radio stations.

...

"No one's going to be searching for Marié Digby, because no one knows who she is," Mr. Bunt, the Hollywood Records senior vice president, reasoned. So she posted covers of hits by Nelly Furtado and Maroon 5, among others, so that users searching for those artists' songs would stumble on hers instead. Her version of Rihanna's "Umbrella" proved a nearly instant hit.

...

As Ms. Digby's star rose, other media outlets played along. When Los Angeles adult-contemporary station KYSR-FM, which calls itself "Star 98.7," interviewed Ms. Digby in July, she and the disc jockey discussed her surprising success. "We kind of found her on YouTube," the DJ, known as Valentine, said. Playing the lucky nobody, Ms. Digby said: "I'm usually the listener calling in, you know, just hoping that I'm going to be the one to get that last ticket to the Star Lounge with [pop star] John Mayer!" The station's programming executives now acknowledge they had booked Ms. Digby's appearance through Hollywood Records, and were soon collaborating with the label to sell "Umbrella" as a single on iTunes.

So we've gotten to the point where the major labels' plan of attack is to encourage their artists to appear to be diy and not actually associate themselves with the majors. Is this what Rubin's "word-of-mouth department" would devise?

Dear Rick Rubin: Did You Not Get the Memo?

I was going to do a post on the Rick Rubin article that appeared in the New York Times this past Sunday, but plenty of others have beaten me to the punch. Plus, surely you know how I feel about the industry by now.

Suffice to say that the words coming out of Rubin's mouth are right on the money, but the very act of taking a job at Columbia makes me wonder how much he believes himself, or else how misguided he is in what he thinks he can accomplish. I think Columbia is looking for a figurehead, not someone who can implement anything. Sad to say but, like that IBM commercial I've been seeing lately, I think Rubin is merely "ideating."

So here are some other places to look for reactions: Lefsetz goes on a rant. GloNo hails Rubin's new gig as a good thing. The folks at ILM weigh in. And over at woxy, too (including me, posting as Joseph Scott).

[Edit: Forgot to mention Maureen Maura Johnston's take at Idolator, which is nicely written. I'm glad to see Idolator employing bloggers that can take an intelligent pass at their subject, rather than sticking 100% to the snarky tone of the Gawker et al. family.]

Go Die Addendum

As a p.s. to this week's posts [part I, part II], Catbirdseat notes sales figures for a few recent indie (and/or "indie-esque") releases. Spoon debuted at #10 on the Billboard charts this week, with 47,000 units sold. They were all over the mp3 blogs for the last two months, including the full leaked album quite a while ago. That must say something about the effect of downloading on indies vs mainstream groups, right? Catbird got its data from IndieHQ, a site I've never seen before but am now bookmarking.

Dear Music Industry: Go DiePart II: How Does it Feel to be Sam Walton's Bitch?

[Yesterday: Part I: Cleanup on Aisle 7]

The industry’s allegiance to Wal-Mart has been the case since the 1990s, when Wal-Mart and its ilk began selling music at prices music retailers (indie or not) could not compete with. It remained the case in this decade when, as the Rolling Stone article details, the industry had the opportunity to make a deal with Napster but capitulated to its top retailers instead:

It all could have been different: Seven years ago, the music industry’s top executives gathered for secret talks with Napster CEO Hank Barry. At a July 15th, 2000, meeting, the execs—including the CEO of Universal’s parent company, Edgar Bronfman Jr.; Sony Corp. head Nobuyuki Idei; and Bertelsmann chief Thomas Middelhof—sat in a hotel in Sun Valley, Idaho, with Barry and told him that they wanted to strike licensing deals with Napster. “Mr. Idei started the meeting,” recalls Barry, now a director in the law firm Howard Rice. “He was talking about how Napster was something the customers wanted.”

The idea was to let Napster’s 38 million users keep downloading for a monthly subscription fee—roughly $10—with revenues split between the service and the labels. But ultimately, despite a public offer of $1 billion from Napster, the companies never reached a settlement. “The record companies needed to jump off a cliff, and they couldn’t bring themselves to jump,” says Hilary Rosen, who was then CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America. “A lot of people say, ‘The labels were dinosaurs and idiots, and what was the matter with them?’ But they had retailers telling them, ‘You better not sell anything online cheaper than in a store,’ and they had artists saying, ‘Don’t screw up my Wal-Mart sales.’”

It’s worth noting this. The record labels were ready to embrace the technology and “their retailers” said “you better not sell anything online cheaper than in a store.” Now, which “retailers” do you think said that? Was it Tower, where a CD cost on average $15.99, or was it Wal-Mart, where the same CD cost half that? This was Tower’s (and, of course, the indies’) own lament years ago when Wal-Mart first decided to start selling music. The record stores ability to compete was impinged upon because the corporate labels saw dollars via quantities of CD-sales-as-impulse-buys. Now that the same threat—vast quantities of impulse buys—faced Wal-Mart, the industry should have stuck to what it knew how to do: screwing over the people and businesses that do well for it. But it bowed to almighty Wal-Mart. Why did it bow this time but not when record stores made the same threat regarding Wal-Mart in the 1990s? Because Wal-Mart doesn't need the music industry, and the industry knows it. Major labels have become the bitch of grocery chains.  And when Napster was destroyed, like a mama spider it laid millions of little illegal downloading sites that the labels had no hope of getting a handle on.

Keep in mind the chronology here, and the choices the majors made. First it tried to make peace with Napster, but the big boxes shouted it down. Then the majors sued its own customers. Bask in the power of Wal-Mart.

So now the industry is wringing its hands over filesharing like never before. A few years ago everyone was filesharing in one place—but the industry sent them scattering and now have little hope of stamping them out. I was talking about this with my brilliant wife and she had great insight on this angle. During the whole boy band era—roughly 1997–2003—the industry was pumping out singles-based artists by the truckload, but it wasn’t economically feasible to buy a CD single—one song and a couple b-sides for $6.99 vs. the entire album for only a few more dollars (depending on where you bought it—great deals at Best Buy!). So album sales went up while CD singles went down. Bully for the majors, since the production costs were essentially the same but the markup was higher for full-lengths. Plus you had the industry cash cow Now That’s What I Call Music—this little piece of plastic that you could throw your best-selling singles on and just make that much more money without having to cultivate new artists. The NOW series was charting at #1 at its peak. Mind you, these are tweens and teens buying these comps—the very kids that today are freely downloading whatever they want. When Napster came along it was a no-brainer; the industry had already bred its audience to prefer the singles and eschew the filler. And now the record industry is bemoaning the dearth of album sales? It’s their own fault for not cultivating artists who knew how to make albums.

Rosen offers her take:

“That’s when we lost the users,” Rosen says. “Peer-to-peer took hold. That’s when we went from music having real value in people’s minds to music having no economic value, just emotional value.”

The gall of that quote. The gall! Rosen is equating “real value” with “economic value,” and that it’s a shame for us all that music only has emotional value. Yeah, pity. The music industry, by their unmitigated support for grocery stores over record stores as their preferred retail venue, has implicitly devalued the emotional worth of music. They are not concerned with the notion of a trip to the record store as sacred pilgrimage. To them it’s an errand. Drop off dry cleaning; buy milk; pick up Fergie CD.

What Rosen and the industry at large are obsessing over is the fact that the “casual listener” has stopped valuing music economically. But that’s what you get when you value the retailer that sells your music two aisles down from Charmin Ultra and contact lens solution above the retailer that cares about music, that hires knowledgeable staff to sell you albums you’ve never heard before and, perhaps, turn you into a fan. But those aren’t the stores the industry supports any more—they left bona fide record stores to wither and die years ago.

The “casual listeners” who no longer value music economically are the same listeners who preferred a NOW comp because the last time they bought an actual full-length is was all sketches and dogs. Half-baked albums by artists that were encouraged by their labels to make a minimum number of radio hits—"we'll only pay for three Neptunes-produced tracks"—this is the shit that the companies are pouring millions of dollars into. That’s millions and millions of dollars spent on maybe a hundred artists who keep the behemoth afloat. These are the artists who are suffering. Again, Rolling Stone:

In 2000, U.S. consumers bought 785.1 million albums; last year, they bought 588.2 million (a figure that includes both CDs and downloaded albums), according to Nielsen SoundScan. In 2000, the ten top-selling albums in the U.S. sold a combined 60 million copies; in 2006, the top ten sold just 25 million.

It's a myopic view to only look at the top ten, or even top 100. Because all signs are pointing to an indie music scene that has never been more thriving. Indie bands are appearing in the top forty with more and more regularity, and a band like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah isn’t even on a label at all. I would wager that there are more musicians making an honest living than ever before.  Their ability to survive is not being impinged upon; the people who are hurting are the select few who are expecting millions of dollars on their bottom line. Those artists, and the machine that supports them, are by and large not responsible for the best music (I’ll grant that there are exceptions to that rule, but not enough to change my point), so if the apparatus that supports them goes under, so be it. But I really don’t think the New Pornographers or Jason Molina are going call it quits because too many people are filesharing. The people with passion, whether they be buyers or sellers, will remain. Maybe I’m just being too idealistic about the whole damn thing, but art has never suffered for wont of luxury.

The real malaise of the corporate industry is its slow realization that it is mere middleman. Artists can publicize themselves, can sell their own music, and manage themselves. Even if CYHSY is a brilliant exception to the rule, it remains the case that a smaller label with less overhead can still support a band to a satisfactory degree. The lower the operations costs, the wider the profit margin. The more streamlined behind the scenes, the more financially stable musicians; the more music.

Dear Music Industry: Go DiePart I: Cleanup on Aisle 7

I’ve had a general distaste for the corporate music industry for a while now—ever since they started suing music fans, basically—but in the last month or so a handful of different stories have made that distaste coalesce into a full-on loathing. The last I saw was this, from Rolling Stone (via a thread at Last Plane to Jakarta), which paints the industry’s fate in the most dire terms.

Overall CD sales have plummeted sixteen percent for the year so far—and that’s after seven years of near-constant erosion. In the face of widespread piracy, consumers’ growing preference for low-profit-margin digital singles over albums, and other woes, the record business has plunged into a historic decline.

So the music industry is dying. My reaction? Good fucking riddance. Anything I can do to help it along, let me know. Music has never been better nor more accessible, and the majors’ woes are completely their own fault (which the Rolling Stone article also claims). They haven’t cared about actual music for decades. They’ve cared about converting plastic discs into cash, and people don’t want plastic discs anymore. If they’d done anything to foster creativity in their artists, maybe I’d feel more sympathetic.

For the amount of ink spilled on the subject, you’d think it was all your fault. Heartless music fans have bypassed the saintly corporations in satisfying their sinful needs. I think it’s worth taking another look and who really killed the music industry. (hint: there’s a run on Cheerios on aisle 14.)

One of the common refrains you hear when people disdain downloading is the mp3’s inferiority to the tangible object, the CD. Most recently it came from the mouth of Jesse Harris, songwriter behind Norah Jones’s big hit “Don’t Know Why,” when he was interviewed for the Onion AV Club’s “Random Rules”:

I buy CDs. I do. I still like to have the artwork, and see the credits, and have the CD in my hand, and take it in the car. I don’t know if I’m ever going to get over that. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to replace that with mp3s. Besides, I just don’t think mp3s sound that good. They’re definitely of a lower quality.

It’s literally the same old vinyl vs. CD debate, only the CD—once derided for its artwork-unfriendly format and lesser sound quality—has been recast as the virtuous format. Seriously, isn’t this debate corny? Who wants to look at a 4x4” panel of artwork and read the producing credits and thank-you list when you can experience a terrific website, read your favorite band’s blog, and interact directly with the musician? Preferring a tired old CD booklet is for luddites only. CDs have nothing on mp3s—except for the experience of going to a record store, sifting through the aisles looking for some undiscovered gem, interacting with record store employees who can guide you to something better and talk, face to face with actual voices, about music.

That’s no small thing—in fact it’s something I value a great deal—but don’t believe for a second that the powers behind the music industry give two shits about that experience. The industry is concerned about Wal-Mart and its big-box brethren, and that’s it. According to the Rolling Stone article:

About 2,700 record stores have closed across the country since 2003, according to the research group Almighty Institute of Music Retail. Last year the eighty-nine-store Tower Records chain, which represented 2.5 percent of overall retail sales, went out of business, and Musicland, which operated more than 800 stores under the Sam Goody brand, among others, filed for bankruptcy. Around sixty-five percent of all music sales now take place in big-box stores such as Wal-Mart and Best Buy, which carry fewer titles than specialty stores and put less effort behind promoting new artists.

Look at that. Tower accounted for 2.5 measly percent of retail sales. Wal-Mart and Best Buy are the top two music retailers in the U.S., with Target and other multi-retailers not far off. The music industry’s lack of distinction between these stores and Tower or Musicland had far more to do with their closing than illegal downloads ever could. Tower couldn’t compete with a store that doesn’t mind taking a loss on Avril Lavigne if it means you’ll buy your groceries while you’re there. Today, the industry still values big boxes over bricks-and-mortar music retailers: witness the Smashing Pumpkins promotional debacle, in which Wal-Mart, Target, and iTunes get copies with unique bonus tracks, while Virgin—never mind mom & pops—are stuck selling an essentially incomplete album. The industry is actively discouraging you from patronizing an actual record store.

Yet when Tower went out of business, the majority of blame was laid at the doorstep of music fans—the dastardly pirates. It was perceived as a harbinger of the death of the music industry. Tower’s demise signified one thing and one thing only—the music industry turned its back on music lovers long ago. They only care about Wal-Mart. But does Wal-Mart care about the music industry? No. They’re not interested in competing with iTunes and mp3s. When the plastic disc dies, it will fill its shelves with more deodorants and foot cream. Wal-Mart will roll on without so much as flinching. Just desserts for the music industry; the people who lose their jobs at Sony can go get work at Proctor & Gamble.

Tomorrow: How Does it Feel to be Sam Walton's Bitch?

[Update: Mike Barthel is guest posting at Idolator and his post on Kelly Clarkson and the "Death of the Tusk Era" is tangentially related to some of what I'm talking about, particularly as it gets on in the comments section.]

A Eulogy for Tower Records

News of Tower Records’ demise will likely be met with a shrug of indifference by the web-savvy or pangs of fear and despair by the luddites and elderly. Surely it says something about the state of the music industry that this chain—which, by the way, only had 89 stores nationwide!—couldn’t stay afloat, piracy and iTunes and yadda yadda yadda. But I’ll let some newspaper rehash that in their business section.

The fact is, I haven’t really been in a Tower Records in about twelve years. Sure, there’s always been one nearby—three blocks from my house when I was in college in Arizona, but then again there was a Zia and an Eastside Records right next door; three blocks from my office when I lived in New York, but then again their was Other Music right across the street; and practically across the street from me here in Los Angeles, but then again I’ll happily drive a mile or two to Amoeba down Hollywood way. For more than a decade, for me, there’s always been somewhere better to go for music, and I’m not even accounting for the internet. So yes, I’ve popped in every once in a while, but I haven’t enjoyed being in a Tower since I was a teenager. Even this week, I went to my local Tower to see if I could score a going-out-of-business deal, and their “huge sale” provided perfect fodder for why this chain has gone up in flames. “Going Out of Business!! Everything Must Go!! Everything in the store is 10% Off!!”

10%? Really? You’re liquidating your assets and you still can’t compete with Amazon’s standard discount, or Amoeba’s non-sale prices? You mean I get that $18.99 CD for $17.09? Score!

So of course I’m tempted to say good riddance to Tower. Yet I’m sad to see it go. Arguably, there is no store that will ever be closer to my heart—or my inner teenager's heart, at least. Because before Phoenix, before New York, before Los Angeles, I lived in a smaller town. The kind of town that bands rarely stopped in while touring, that had almost no underground music scene of its own worth speaking of, and that briefly had but couldn’t support an indie record store. The best we had was Tower Records. Not only that, but as teenagers looking for something, anything to do, there wasn’t a whole lot. There was no nearby coffeeshops (that trend was only just beginning to catch on), the movies were too expensive, cruising was silly, and we were too old for the arcades. Again, the best we had was Tower Records. Many a Friday night my friends and I would pull up to Tower and spend a few hours reading the magazines, browsing the racks, or finding a video to rent.

Today it feels like the last place a teenager would go for musical awakenings—hell, even Virgin has all those listening stations—but in the early/mid-90s, that’s just where I went. It really wasn’t so long ago, but it was still the dawn of the popular internet; if you wanted to connect with other people, you had to telnet to newsgroups that started with “alt-dot.” Curious, no? Prehistoric, even.

For the better part of my high school years, I was a metalhead. Somewhere around my junior year my friends and I felt ourselves growing out of it but unsure of where to go. Most of my friends didn’t have older brothers to point the way, and my older brother was no use—he was listening to Zeppelin and Floyd, for godssakes! We had little to go on, but all those nights spent rifling through the racks at Tower gave us our first nudge. Tower had a policy where if you didn’t like something, you could return it. We were liberated! We would go through the racks and buy anything that had a remotely intriguing cover. That led to a lot of disappointments but also the occasional jewel. I found Low that way, for instance. Don’t know why, but I responded to the cover of I Could Live in Hope. It turned out to be about as unmetal as you could get.

Another friend of mine—who I’m sure will comment on this post—had one leg up on the rest of us: he knew about Fugazi. I remember one night the whole gang of us went into that Tower on a mission: we knew Fugazi was awesome; they were on Dischord records; ergo, we spent hours ransacking that store in search of anything on Dischord. At the end of the night we didn’t know what to expect, but we walked out of Tower with discs by Gray Matter and Nation of Ulysses. The former was crap, but NoU? Revolutionary. The back cover of 13-Point Program to Destroy America showed a guy grafting off his own fingerprints, and the brilliant sax-driven punk, with its candy-as-metaphor-for-revolution lyrics, was astounding. We employed similar methods of discovery from then on. I would read the thank-you lists on all my records and go find albums by the bands mentioned. That same Fugazi-friend sought out Flipper, just because he saw Kurt Cobain wearing the t-shirt. If it weren’t Tower’s policy, we never could have taken so many shots in the dark.

Another night I stood alone at the newsstand, reading the latest issue of Alternative Press—their record reviews had become my guiding light, believe it or not. This issue reviewed an album called The White Birch by a band called Codeine. Never heard of ‘em, but they were on the same label as Nirvana’s first album so they had points in their favor. I could barely understand the review, since it referenced obscure curiosities like Slint, Seam, and the Red House Painters as touchstones for Codeine’s sounds. It might as well have been written in Finnish. All I could glean was that they were quiet, and then they’d get really loud. Simple enough formula, I thought, might work. So I put the mag down and looked for Codeine in the bins. They didn’t have it, alas, so I looked for those other bands. I came home that night with a strange little record called Spiderland. I don’t think I could name one other album that diverted my musical path so resolutely. Meanwhile my friends were flipping out over Rocket from the Crypt  (and Nirvana and the Beastie Boys, but that's slightly beside the point)—I mean, to an almost unhealthy degree. They’d sit me down and say “dude, you have to check this out! Circa Now! is mindblowing!” “Cool, yeah, whatever,” I’d say. “Have you heard this song 'Don, a Man?' It’s all downstrokes!”

Thanks to Tower Records, we were well on the way to indie rock snobbery— something that, as far as we knew, was unheard of in our town. The metal purge had begun. Another friend devised the ultimate transformation. He went to Tower one night and bought Slayer’s Seasons in the Abyss. We were perplexed, since he already owned it and we had determined by quorem that the album was now shit. The next night he returned to Tower with his old, beat-up and scratched-to-hell copy of Seasons. “I didn’t like it,” he told the clerk, yesterday's receipt in hand. The clerk threw the disc in the returns basket behind the counter without a thought and told him to go ahead and find something else. He came out of the store with Drive Like Jehu’s Yank Crime (“Dude, I heard John Reis from Rocket is in this band!”). Three days later he was back with the unopened, brand-new Slayer disc, but no receipt. “I got this for my birthday but I already have it; can I exchange it?” “Sure thing,” said the clerk behind the counter. And he was out the door with Goat, by the Jesus Lizard ("The guy that produced In Utero did this album too!").

He did this steadily over the course of a year with his entire CD collection, and he never got caught. We all marveled at his devious tenacity. Meanwhile we sold our shit to the Wherehouse down the street for $4 each, then would come up to Tower for something new if we scrounged enough cash. We were jealous of his two-to-one exchanges but we didn't have the balls to try it ourselves. To cap it off, he applied for a job at Tower and was hired.

As Tower is no more, a part of me can’t help but feel it’s the end of an era. But the fact is that within a year of those first musical epiphanies I was off to another city for college, one with multiple indie record stores with knowledgeable staff and much more in-depth stock (found that Codeine album, finally). The end of the Tower era, for me, was somewhere around mid-1995.

I do wonder if kids today (yes, I’m 93—living "pre-internet" automatically qualifies me as elderly) could ever really experience music for the first time in the same way. The answer, probably, is no—even in a city like Los Angeles where digging around in Amoeba would surely yield even better results. But who’s to say discovering the Arcade Fire on an mp3 blog is no less life-changing for the kid growing up in Lexington, Nebraska, as my stumbling across Slint in Fresno, California? Not me. Tower is dead, but the kids are all right.

Think Again, NYT Trend Piece: The Bell Tolls for Thee

This weekend the New York Times had two "the death of..." articles: one on the doomed genre known as "alt country"—which apparently hinged all these years on whether the Jayhawks were releasing albums  and whether No Depression included their little tagline on their cover—"Alt-Country (whatever that is)"—which by the way, if you hadn't noticed, is itself dismissive of the label. I was going to write more about it, but Chromewaves pretty much took the words out of my mouth. Have you been to Chromewaves, by the way? I just discovered it last week and it has become daily reading for me. Really great blog.

The other article tolled the death knell for indie record stores, saying that "the kids" don't go to record stores any more so soon enough they won't exist at all, once the gray-haired ponytailed introverts die off. And their evidence for this trend is based on... Norman's Sound and Vision in the East Village? Have you ever been to Norman's? There are a lot of reasons why people don't shop there. Never mind that it's cramped and messy and is filled to the gills with used CDs that are rarely worth purchasing even for a $1.50. I wonder if the Times reporter peeked around the corner to Kim's, or hopped across the Bowery to Other Music? Tough to blame iTunes and Amazon when the two most renowned indie record stores in Manhattan are both within spitting distance—not to mention Sounds, Finyl Vinyl, or the very underrated (and superior to all) Etherea over on Avenue B (plus a huge Tower Records across the street and a Virgin Megastore not far off)? Frankly it's just silly to claim the indie is dying in the heart of the one neighborhood in the entire country where indie record stores actually outnumber Starbucks in the course of a four-block radius.

I will say, however, that I did go through a phase of not really shopping at record stores for a few years (on a regular basis, anyway). Partly burned out on a lot of new music, partly ass broke for a lengthy stretch. New York may have a ton of great record stores, but the used selections at all of them are either lacking or overpriced—the result of too many people with great taste occupying one tiny little island. Now that I live in Los Angeles I have Amoeba, which may well be the most successful record store in the entire metropolitan area, indie or not. And thank god for Amoeba. All the pleasures of my high school and college years of spending hours sifting through every aisle, every bin, has returned. It's an experience that can't be beat, like going to Toys R Us when you're a littl'un. iTunes is a nice resource, sure, but people do like leaving their homes, which sometimes means going to a bricks-and-mortar retailer. As long as the selection is superior, the staff is knowledgable, and the prices are decent, then a good store will stick around.