Reconsidering the Album

28 03 2011

The album is not dead. The decline of the CD, and shrinking market share of the LP format does not necessitate the extinction of the album, it only marks the album’s exit as the dominant format through which music is consumed.

For decades the record industry was able to sell albums, in the form of LP records, cassette tapes, and CDs. This system worked because the consumer had no ability to pick and choose individual tracks that they wanted off a certain release—their only option was to buy the entire album. There was no method for à la carte track availability, and unless the consumer wanted only the single (if there was even a single offered) they would have to purchase the full LP to acquire the tracks they desired. Selling albums with three to four gems and nine tracks of filler was a success to the point that it was taken for granted that the model of making a majority of consumers pay for more than they actually wanted was not sustainable. Eventually the album was bound to be displaced by a system that was more able to meet the demands of the consumer, by allowing them the freedom to purchase what they want, and not pay for things that they didn’t. As the Mp3 increased in popularity and digital files ate away at the dominance of physical product, this barrier to individual track access disappeared and heralded the decline of the album as a format. The prevailing model is no longer a physical container filled with songs, but the digital single, downloaded or streamed for low cost (or free) and easily accessed. The album cannot possibly compete as the dominant format against the ability to easily choose tracks à la carte.

But, again, the album is not dead; its decline will not be its demise. The album still has a place among music fans, not as the dominant consumption format, but as a niche product. Like the relatively thriving demand for vinyl in certain music scenes, there is still a place for the album format within specific areas of the music industry. There are those who enjoy listening to an entire LP of interrelated tracks, or a group of songs built around an overarching concept. They are not the majority, but they can represent enough of an artist’s fan base that musicians should not dispose of the idea of the album entirely. It’s true, in certain genres like pop and hip hop, where single songs are the primary drivers of purchasing traffic, the album may no longer make sense as the most effective means to package music. However, in a jazz or indie rock context the album format may still be viable, and should be utilized accordingly. Regardless of differences in genre, the album should be thought of as a specialty item, and should fulfill a particular purpose, with a particular demographic in mind, not merely be employed because it is how music has been packaged for the last few decades. The days of selling hundreds of thousands of physical albums are waning, and there is no point in holding on to that era’s outmoded methodologies. It’s time to reconsider the role of the album, and use it as a distinctive tool at the artist’s disposal, instead of as the go to format for releasing music.

Originally posted at Fame House.

www.famehouse.net


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Another Gem

27 03 2011


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Writing About Writing

24 03 2011

“The first draft of everything is shit.” -Ernest Hemingway

Truer words may have never been spoken. Sitting down and creating coherent prose off the cuff is a daunting task, even for the genius that was Mr. Hemingway. I have come to realize this particular point much more acutely in the short time since starting this blog. This being my first attempt at writing any original content since college, I have been reminded quite blatantly of the difficulty that comes along with the creation of original content worthy of putting on the page. Sitting down to write after a long day of work, or school, or both as is my current case, does not lend itself to the creation of literary masterpieces. Even coming up with bullshit rants seems taxing after a 13 hour day. Even still, I find that the greatest challenge for me is not sitting down to do it, it’s accepting the inevitable shitty first draft. I never allow myself the ugly, childish, disorganized draft that facilitates the eventual cohesive final product. You know, the first draft that you wouldn’t show to anyone, ever. The one that is so bad it makes you reexamine your life and want to retire from creative thinking altogether. Either that or put a fist through the monitor glaring at you with your pathetic prose. Regardless of how you deal with the insulting mindfuck that is the first draft, the real difficulty is realizing its necessity. Without putting together some type of rough outline, the work can become a case study in meticulously finding the perfect word for each situation, while missing the flow of the piece as a whole. Micromanaging the first draft, as I always somehow manage to do, leads to the death of coherency. I have spent ten minutes (not an exaggeration) fastidiously crafting a perfect sentence, using all the words with the correct connotative references to whatever it is that I’m trying to describe, orchestrating the proper cadence, and rearranging everything to perfection, only to move on to the next sentence and forget entirely the trajectory of the section I’m working on. Fifty perfect sentences don’t make a perfect written work. Fifty perfect sentences can create fifty different wonderful worlds of creative prose, and still lack the continuity and flow of a well written piece. I can’t tell you how many times I have spent hours writing an excruciatingly small number of sentences only to abandon them in their infancy on the church steps of my computer’s trash can because, though great sentences, they don’t coalesce into the whole I had originally envisioned.

And here it becomes obvious why the shitty first draft is so invaluable—it allows a stream of consciousness flow of ideas to be recorded as it happens, unhindered and uncensored by self-criticism. It permits thought to be articulated in its entirety, before it can be cannibalized by our internal editorial filters, allowing the essence of the idea to exist in the form in which it comes to us. The shitty first draft is the record of an original idea, in all of the chaos and imperfection that accompany creative expression.

These moments of inspiration should not be subjected to the constraints of censorship, as doing so has the potential to stifle the original idea before it is fully formed. In other words, let the first draft be gloriously shitty. Turn the censors off. Create something. Worry about word choice and run-on sentences later.

“Art is what we call the thing an artist does. It’s not the medium or the oil or the price or whether it hangs on a wall or you eat it. What matters, what makes it art, is that the person who made it overcame the resistance, ignored the voice of doubt and made something worth making. Something risky. Something human. Art is not in the eye of the beholder. It’s in the soul of the artist.” -Seth Godin


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As It Stands: Digital Marketing in the Music Industry

11 03 2011

The current state of digital marketing in the music industry is one of hyper-fragmentation. Picking and choosing marketing tactics for the extensive number of platforms and media outlets through which fans consume content is a representation of just one of the extremely daunting tasks that marketers have in today’s music business.  The digitization of the social sphere has helped, by amassing communities of like-minded fans interacting, sharing, and participating on unparalleled levels, but there remains a problem of accessing these fans as they sit amongst the hundreds of millions of other (“non-fan”) users. For these, and a myriad of other reasons, digital marketing in the music industry is a very promising field. Fans are out there, and they are consuming and sharing content like never before, it is merely a matter of finding ways to reach them. There are infinite opportunities for new strategies, new methods of analysis, and new ways to target a fan base—success depends only upon ones ability to be creative. Though there are no surefire systems for attaining marketing success, there are some proven methods for maximizing effectiveness in the current digital landscape.

The first is accessing social networks and integrating the artist into the conversation. Keep in mind that these networks are communities, and must be treated as such. Marketing within these communities is problematic because input seen as inauthentic (i.e. a sales pitch) is immediately recognizable and risks exclusion. Therefore, marketing within the social media context must be performed very carefully. Traditional push marketing techniques are not appropriate, as members of the community are interested in the communal aspect of discovery and sharing, not a commercial agenda. Marketing strategies need to take this into account, and should first seek to join the conversation, before pursuing any attempt at monetizing the social sphere. This is not to say that marketing isn’t permitted via social media, only that it must be done tastefully, with careful attention paid to the attitudes and interests of the community. The artist’s interactions facilitate the formation of relationships directly with fans, but it is up to the marketing team to devise an appropriate means of turning these relationships into revenue.

The second, and quite possibly the most important aspect in creating effective digital marketing, is the aggregation and evaluation of analytics. The proliferation of software tools for information collection has made it possible to acquire data from almost any online interaction—data that is invaluable for reviewing the efficacy of marketing strategies. Not only can marketers assemble information about how many people opened an email, but they can see who clicked which links, bought items, or any number of other important statistics. An artist and their marketing team should garner all the information they can get from their fans, so that they may find ways to more efficiently and more effectively market to them in the future.

Digital marketing in the music business is a hustle. Social media etiquette and a scientific attention to analytics will help, but there is no blueprint for an effective digital marketing plan. One has to keep in mind that marketing is about each individual user experience. Fans want authenticity, relevance, and personalization, and providing these is the only way to create a successful digital marketing campaign.

Originally posted at Fame House.

www.famehouse.net


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A Letter to Rick Rubin

10 03 2011

Dear Rick-

I received my copy of Adele’s new album “21” a few days ago. I bought the CD, wanting higher sound quality than the usual Mp3, to allow me to better hear all the nuances of Adele’s majestic voice  in a relatively pristine audio format. After putting the CD in my computer and firing up my studio speakers I relaxed and prepared to spend an hour doing nothing but listening. I took in the first few tracks but track four stuck out. “Don’t You Remember,” as it’s called, seemed to have audible distortion laced throughout the song. I played it again just to make sure I wasn’t mistaken. No, it was there, clear as day. My mind immediately raced through the potential causes, but upon hearing a crescendo I knew the answer. Overcompression. Damn, some jackass hammered down on the compression ratio and steamrolled the dynamics to the point of fuzz. I was dismayed, certainly, but willing to accept someone’s mixing error. I settled back into listening, but by the time “He Won’t Go” hit my ears there was definitely a slight distortion lacing the more instrument heavy portions of the track. At this point I started to get flustered. Why would someone use such an aggressive mixing style on what are essentially pop ballads? I couldn’t think of any sensible reason behind it, but I wasn’t happy. Pissed off, but not letting the obnoxious grit distract from my listening experience, I continued letting Adele sign her sorrows at high volume. Three tracks later, more distortion. ‘What the fuck,’ I thought to myself, ‘this has to be some kind of mistake.’ Annoyed enough at this point, I pulled out the liner notes for the CD—I had to know what was going on. When I found the line for production credit on “Don’t You Remember” I realized that the overcompression on these tracks wasn’t an accident, it was your signature.

Look Rick, you are responsible for discovering and producing some of the best music ever made. Your track record speaks for itself. However, Adele is not Jay-Z, nor The Red Hot Chili Peppers. Those artists and styles lend themselves well to your steamroller compression tactics, but I find it hard to justify using the same production methods on “21.” In my opinion, you shit on greatness.

You left your sonic fingerprints all over this record, and honestly, I find it inappropriate. The role of a producer is to guide the music toward the pinnacle of whatever it is that the song is written to express. This includes help writing and arranging, but also employing recording and mixing techniques that complement the musical direction. When you mix tracks (or supervise the mixing of tracks) the expression of the song should reign as creative director, not you. Your job is merely to interpret the vision and make it real. You took mellow pop songs and applied your signature aggressive mix to all of them, effectively tagging each with the graffiti of your style.

Luckily for you, most people won’t notice what you’ve done to these tracks. Those of us who love audio, have. We aren’t happy, Rick.

Respectfully,

Kyle Fisher


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Hilarity

4 02 2011

This type of humor is right up my alley. If you find this as laugh out loud (legitimately, not that LoL typed shit) funny as I do click the picture and give Married to the Sea a little of your precious time.


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Adele

3 02 2011

If you consider yourself a music fan you should pay attention. For those unfamiliar, let me present Adele. Adele gives me hope that great music is still being made. Watch this woman perform and you’ll immediately understand what I’m talking about. Adele’s voice makes you want to cry, gives you goosebumps, and produces the feeling that the whole world is hanging on her next note, all within the confines of a single song. She has one of the most powerful and moving voices I have ever heard, and this performance only validates her virtuosity. It is a testament to what music should sound like. This is not sung in a recording studio, mind you, this is performed on a TV sound stage in a warehouse, and the woman sounds absolutely brilliant.

Adele is not Lady Gaga in a meat dress, nor any other media frenzy entrepreneur, she is raw talent personified. There is no gimmick here. There doesn’t have to be, she is just that good. Adele only misses one note in the entire performance (2:12), just enough to remind us that she is, in fact, human. The most frightening thing about her is that she is only 22 years old.


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My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

25 01 2011

This is a biased review, straight up. To think otherwise would be foolish. The fact is, I really like Kanye West. Personal dickheadedness aside (though if you heard Taylor Swift attempt that duet with the great Stevie Nicks you would have stood up and applauded his award show outburst), Ye writes amazing music. People, probably the same hating on Tiger Woods for things completely unrelated to the reason they loved him in the first place, front about how Kanye is whack and rocks polos and samples other people’s music and you are more than welcome to argue the merits and drawbacks to his personal choices but one fact remains: Kanye makes jams.

Irrespective of personal feelings on the subject, as alluded to above, this is in fact a review. To call an album “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” is making a statement. To do so and drop an album that is exactly that, a trip into the mind of a maven, exploring what exactly makes Kanye tick, is a match to the powder keg of popular music. Some will scoff that this album represents another egotistical expedition through the contents of Kanye’s mind, but honestly, what else could you possibly want from a man so obviously invested in his own mental world?  The guy is an expert at being himself, what better than letting him run around the scarier parts of his mind for an hour and nine minutes? Let the experts do what they’re good at. In Mr. West’s case that means being Ye at all costs.

At first listen the album represents a sonic departure from his previous efforts. I know there are some of you who immediately recall the sparce and somewhat psychedelic autotuned atmosphere of 808’s and Heartbreaks, but let me assure you, this record is nothing like 808’s. MBDTF is a Zeppelin meets Queen meets pure Kanye hip hop epic. This album is made to sound as huge as possible, and not huge in the overhyped bass and lower midrange that most hip hop albums rely on to sound big—this album is operatic. Large scale orchestrations, stacked vocal harmonies, and emotional fire create what feels like a fist in the teeth of the Hot 100. In MBDTF he explores the contents of the darker parts of his psyche in such an organic and fluid manner that people may fail to realize the gravity of his memes. Mining material from his much publicized personal life, analysis of his self-image, and the usual fascination with fat booties, Kanye merges the three seamlessly, hopping between lines with a deftness hinted at on his previous releases, but perfected on MBDTF.

Sonically, the album is a lot dirtier than anything Kanye has put out. I’m not talking about x-rated lyricism (though there is no shortage, “Have you ever had sex with a Pharaoh? I’ll put the pussy in a sarcophagus.”) but instead, Ye’s use of distortion. Though his former albums all possessed the typical scratches and pops of sampled vinyl, this album is laced with harmonic overtones as a vast majority of the tracks are saturated in buttery distortion. In stark contrast to the relatively clean production of 808’s, MBDTF sounds like a classic rock record. The distortion provides a cohesion reminiscent of the days of records recorded entirely on 2″ tape, allowing tracks an amount of bleed and sonic overlap that only adds to the album’s epic feel. It sounds like the album was recorded with all the instruments in one room, with little attention paid to sound isolation, giving it a classic and almost live feel that is literally unheard in hip hop.

The best part about MBDTF, though, is the fact that Kanye shows no signs of resting on his laurels. He could have easily taken the criticism he received for 808’s and churned out another Graduation album, but thankfully he isn’t that kind of artist. Instead, he pushed things even further, exploring new territory for himself as well as hip hop as a genre. There has never been an album that sounds quite like MBDTF, and there won’t be again, because Kanye will take things in another direction, driving his music and himself toward the creation of a new sound. As Ye himself said, “I’m not saying I’m the best, I’m just saying it’s a goal of mine, and anybody who tries to knock my goals can eat shit.” The guy isn’t going to stop pushing, and even if you can’t appreciate the music on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, you can’t knock the hustle.


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Cheers to Those Who Inspire

20 01 2011

It’s a new year. Most people use the occasion as a means to spur short-lived forays into exercise, to temporarily quit smoking, or attempt other such quality of life improvements. These tend to take the title “resolutions,” and though by definition the term should delineate an unwavering adherence to some purpose, most seem to somehow fizzle out and are forgotten by mid-February. Apparently the rolling over of another calendar year isn’t quite the drill sergeant motivational force that people would like it to be. This should come as no surprise. As much as a new year seems like a momentous event worthy of massive glitter-ball drops, champagne toasts, and an excuse to look as fly as possible, the fact is that pageantry aside, a new year is just another day. Now before I am accused of being the DUI checkpoint killing everyone’s holiday buzz, realize that I am not discounting the obvious fun of celebration, nor am I saying that I don’t willingly participate in every bit of the chaos, my criticism is merely that New Years doesn’t motivate people. On January 1st people wake up slightly hungover with a laundry list of potential life improvements. This is all well and good, except that if they lacked the motivation up until this point there is very little chance that the fact that it’s now January 1st will be enough. What’s missing is inspiration.

For this reason I would like to propose a toast. Cheers to those who inspire. Cheers to the people who make you want to wake up and kick ass every single day. These are the best people in the world. They deserve their own countdown and chorus of champagne flutes clicking in their honor.

If you know someone, live with someone, love someone, or even merely know of someone who you find inspirational, thank them. These are the people who make you want to better yourself on a daily basis. They aren’t calling you at 6:30 in the morning and telling you to get up and run, they don’t have to. Their inspiration has more finesse than that. They are a silver-haired, saxophone playing Bill Clinton seducing the White House intern of your motivation. Just sharing your life with these people is enough to make you want to better yourself. If you have someone like this in your life you know it—they are everything that January 1st is not. They provide you every day with the inspiration that no list of resolutions on the fridge ever could. Surround yourself with people who make you want to be the best and grow with them. Inspire one another.

That’s something worth dropping a glitter-ball from the rooftops for.


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Wholesale Patriotism

14 01 2011

There are few experience’s I find quite as glaringly American as shopping at Costco. It’s true, buying groceries may not have the same rabid nationalism as the Fourth of July, but flag waving, fireworks, and plentiful Budweisers aside, going to Costco gives Independence Day a decent run for it’s money in terms of glorifying the American zeitgeist. Where else are overabundance, reckless overconsumption, and unnecessary competition celebrated so vehemently? There really is nothing more ludicrous than a few thousand people in a building, carts filled with 80 ounce jars of Best Foods mayonnaise (the twin pack), a box of 48 Jimmy Dean Griddle Cakes, and a cube of toilet paper the size of a Mini Cooper, shoving one another for one toothpicked cube of room temperature havarti. An interesting moment arises while standing in line for the latest toaster oven prepared snack when those waiting with you come to the realization that there can’t possibly be enough samples to go around—that’s when the character assessments begin. You see them doing the mental math, noting that there are only three samples for the four people in line, and you discover that the Filipino man to your left is shooting furtive glances your way, sizing you up to see how adamantly you are prepared to defend your right to “first come, first served.” You’re both wondering if there is another tray of moderately heated snacks seconds away from being pulled out of the toaster, or if the last remaining paper cup will need to be fought over. The tension is palpable.

The experience is magnified by the fact that there is only one Costco for all 800,000 residents of San Francisco, compounding the problem by exponentially increasing the amount of shopping carts per acre of warehouse space. A Sunday afternoon Costco run feels like the consumer equivalent of volunteering for Birkenau. The sheer number of people creates an ant farm effect, with everyone vying for the same space, attempting to steer carts toward their next purchase through the labyrinthine concrete corridors. The number of carts is excessive, that’s for sure, but this would be less of a problem were it not for the fact that each of them is indiscriminately stacked to the limits of their tensile strength with enough wholesale goods to bring Port-Au-Prince back from the brink of extinction. If every 115 pound soccer mom was deftly maneuvering corners with the handling skills of an Andretti, piloting their lineman’s sled of a shopping cart effortlessly through the masses, that would be one thing. Unfortunately, the reality looks more like the I-405/US-101 interchange in the dark heart of rush hour. Confused, scared, and unsure of their next move, people halt the momentum of their carts in order to contemplate a mid-aisle change of direction, failing to realize that the inertia of the load will do everything in its power to prevent being nudged toward the next impulse buy. This blockage creates catastrophic consequences for anyone naive enough to believe in forward progress. The pathway clogs faster than arteries at the mercy of a KFC Double Stack, locking everyone involved in the perpetual clusterfuck.

Regardless of the sense of armageddon that befalls me every time I set foot in Costco, I can’t help but walk around fascinated by the sociological experiment that its particular brand of large-scale consumerism engenders. It’s the train wreck theory in action. I know that I’ll see things I don’t like, things that might make me angry or disgusted, but I make the journey, knowing that I will leave with a stomach ache and a sense that the world is, in fact, going to shit. But I mean really, where else could I possibly go that would highlight our addiction to consumption more poignantly?

Well, I guess there’s Walmart.


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