http://www.electricalaudio.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?p=815166#p815166
― global tetrahedron, Saturday, 5 October 2013 17:11 (ten years ago) link
;_;
― set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl), Saturday, 5 October 2013 17:24 (ten years ago) link
pt cruiser is very much in character
― call all destroyer, Saturday, 5 October 2013 17:48 (ten years ago) link
the only bad thing about driving a PT cruiser is when you pass another PT cruiser and the driver looks at you with a knowing smile
― flamboyant goon tie included, Saturday, 5 October 2013 18:21 (ten years ago) link
hope the pt cruiser has truck nutz
― mookieproof, Saturday, 5 October 2013 19:48 (ten years ago) link
just plz tell me it's not a convertible
― set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl), Saturday, 5 October 2013 19:52 (ten years ago) link
Know why he must like it? Quality engineering.
― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, 5 October 2013 21:24 (ten years ago) link
i wanted him to drive a beatup GMC A-Team van
you guys I'm really bummed out by this
― set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl), Sunday, 6 October 2013 03:23 (ten years ago) link
then again I heard a while ago that Maynard gets around LA in a smartcar which made me lol so, idk...maybe I can get over this
Problem with Music sequel, of sorts:
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/nov/17/steve-albinis-keynote-address-at-face-the-music-in-full
― Josh in Chicago, Monday, 17 November 2014 18:12 (nine years ago) link
Imagine a great hall of fetishes where whatever you felt like fucking or being fucked by, however often your tastes might change, no matter what hardware or harnesses were required, you could open the gates and have at it on a comfy mattress at any time of day. That’s what the internet has become for music fans. Plus bleacher seats for a cheering section.
― Josh in Chicago, Monday, 17 November 2014 18:20 (nine years ago) link
"for music fans"
― difficult listening hour, Monday, 17 November 2014 18:21 (nine years ago) link
Once we release music it’s out of our control. I use the verb “release” because it’s common vernacular. But I think it’s a perfect description. Even more apt if you consider what happens when you release other things, say a bird or a fart. When you release them they’re in the world and the world will react and use them as it sees fit. The fart may wrinkle noses until it dissipates. The bird may fly outside and crap on windshields; it may get shot down by a farmer. It’s been released, so you have no control over it. You can’t recall the fart, however much you would like to. You can’t protect the bird.
― Josh in Chicago, Monday, 17 November 2014 18:23 (nine years ago) link
Music has entered the environment as an atmospheric element, like the wind, and in that capacity should not be subject to control and compensation. Well, not unless the rights holders are willing to let me turn the tables on it. If you think my listening is worth something, OK then, so do I. Play a Phil Collins song while I’m grocery shopping? Pay me $20. Def Leppard? Make it $100. Miley Cyrus? They don’t print money big enough.
― Josh in Chicago, Monday, 17 November 2014 18:27 (nine years ago) link
piece is written like a true libertarian
― Οὖτις, Monday, 17 November 2014 18:49 (nine years ago) link
I mean he's not wrong but there's some serious social darwinism implications to his stance (ie if bands can't make a living at their music it's their tough shit for not being good enough, and the old system that protected them was wrong to do so)
― Οὖτις, Monday, 17 November 2014 18:50 (nine years ago) link
remember back when Albini would take potshots at like, Fugazi. now he's just making Miley jokes like everyone else.
― ƋППṍӮɨ∏ğڵșěᶉᶇдM℮ (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Monday, 17 November 2014 18:52 (nine years ago) link
Albini thinks the old system didn't protect the vast majority of bands at all. That's basically the whole thesis of the first "Problem With Music" and he reiterates it in the new one.
― JRN, Monday, 17 November 2014 18:59 (nine years ago) link
I think his point is that it's a wash. Yes, people make less money from selling records, but the flipside is that distro is virtually nothing, recording costs are a fraction of what they once were, and (at least established) bands potentially make more money playing live than they used to.
― Josh in Chicago, Monday, 17 November 2014 19:01 (nine years ago) link
ie if bands can't make a living at their music it's their tough shit for not being good enough
this is true tho. how many bands do we really need? only a couple are really entitled livings imo, the other 100000000 bands the world is currently blessed with? extraneous to literally everyone... no?
― shmurda on da shmorient shmexpress (sleepingbag), Monday, 17 November 2014 19:05 (nine years ago) link
if bands can't make a living at their music it's their tough shit for not being good enough
I would bet an amusingly large sum of money on this not being an accurate reading of his views
― proper maoist (DJ Mencap), Monday, 17 November 2014 19:08 (nine years ago) link
to answer the OP, albini is currently waiting for a train
― ya'll are the ones who don't know things (Karl Malone), Monday, 17 November 2014 19:08 (nine years ago) link
what's interesting about his argument (well one thing interesting about it) is that the atomization of culture doesn't bother him. He thinks it's great to have a million different micro-scenes sustaining themselves but essentially isolated from each other. Which okay yeah it has its virtues. But it makes every scene feel so *small* and insignificant.
xp
― Οὖτις, Monday, 17 November 2014 19:09 (nine years ago) link
only a couple are really entitled livings imo, the other 100000000 bands the world is currently blessed with? extraneous to literally everyone... no?
exactly. the market works!
I see an awful lot of packed shows these days. These micro-scenes get out the vote.
― Josh in Chicago, Monday, 17 November 2014 19:10 (nine years ago) link
Is his point that it's a wash? The thesis seemed stronger than that, on my first reading. I read Albini as saying that things are better now, given how critical he was in the past:
I’ll start by saying that I’m both satisfied and optimistic about the state of the music scene. And I welcome the social and technological changes that have influenced it.
Although they are largely anecdotal, the picture he paints of the pre-Internet industry seems more or less right. The radically increased accessibility of recording technology is definitely great for musicians, although this seems related only tangentially to the changes in the distribution system of the finished products. And the increased accessibility of music is obviously good for listeners, at least in the short term. However, on first reading, I do not see that he really makes a strong case for how 'the new model' allows musicians to make a living from their music, aside from charging higher prices for live performance: it seems to depend too strongly on the voluntary goodness of audiences and on sales of "ephemera and merchandise" (in which case musicians are really making living from things that are incidental to the music).
― EveningStar (Sund4r), Monday, 17 November 2014 19:43 (nine years ago) link
he seems much more positive to me
he does not actually address what musicians who have seen their incomes collapse are supposed to do, or whose fault that is
― Οὖτις, Monday, 17 November 2014 19:51 (nine years ago) link
I think that's what he's saying "optimistic" - that he doesn't see the effect of these changes on the "industry" as cause for concern, as he thought the industry was pretty shit
definitely libertariany and I'm bummed he devolves into pop-baiting at the end just in case anyone forgot he could, but he does give a little more historical context beyond "my hit in the 90s used to make me this much, now i get this much"
― da croupier, Monday, 17 November 2014 19:52 (nine years ago) link
also, from albini's perspective, most musicians who've seen their incomes collapse were already "fucked" in his pov twenty years ago
― da croupier, Monday, 17 November 2014 19:57 (nine years ago) link
Also, first four Def Leppard albums obv = classic
xpost
― EveningStar (Sund4r), Monday, 17 November 2014 19:58 (nine years ago) link
he's saying what I always wished more indie lifers would say -- music becoming much much cheaper to record, cheaper to distribute, cheaper to hear is a net win for everybody, and it hurts people at the top far more than it hurts people who just wanna make whatever they want and/or hear whatever they want and aren't too considered with becoming rich rock stars.
― nakhchi little van (some dude), Monday, 17 November 2014 20:04 (nine years ago) link
I do wish he'd made clearer that he must think Spotify is a sick joke. It's going to be too easy for people to ignore the bit about "hybrid approaches" and pretend he's signing off on every type of "brave new world" we're being offered
― da croupier, Monday, 17 November 2014 20:05 (nine years ago) link
it hurts people that used to be at the top of the music industry. It is absolutely awesome for people at the top of the tech industry. old boss same as the new boss etc.
― Οὖτις, Monday, 17 November 2014 20:06 (nine years ago) link
it's funny how he can get so het up about the intense machinations of the gargantuan dinosaur music industry and then give not a single sentence of consideration to the tech industry, which has basically just replaced the tech industry and still funnels money upwards, away from musicians.
― Οὖτις, Monday, 17 November 2014 20:07 (nine years ago) link
lol replaced the OLD MUSIC INDUSTRY that should say
― Οὖτις, Monday, 17 November 2014 20:08 (nine years ago) link
OTM
― EveningStar (Sund4r), Monday, 17 November 2014 20:08 (nine years ago) link
I mean who does he think really makes money off of youtube etc
miley
― difficult listening hour, Monday, 17 November 2014 20:09 (nine years ago) link
I mean I'm sure radio appeared ABSOLUTELY INSANELY AWESOME to the first musicians that got played on it, and they were more than happy to do whatever just to be on it, sign away rights, not pay any attention to where money was going etc. until oh wait it's four decades later look how that whole industry turned out oh what do you mean someone else owns all my publishing and has been collecting my royalty checks...?
― Οὖτις, Monday, 17 November 2014 20:10 (nine years ago) link
I really like how he pointed out internet making international distribution so easy to do now, it'll be interesting to watch music culture be less and less America-centric in the future.
― ©Oz Quiz© (Adam Bruneau), Monday, 17 November 2014 20:11 (nine years ago) link
he's definitely in that realm of indie iconoclasts who focus their bile on peers but get a little vague when it comes to the world outside. quick to point out how someone is failing to be as cool as music dude as him, strong feelings about the ethical treatment of room sound. less confident when it comes to evils he doesn't see first-hand.
― da croupier, Monday, 17 November 2014 20:13 (nine years ago) link
i mean when the dude from cracker is going on about how the majors found a new way to steal his "low" money, steve's going to be a little more interested in saying "told you so, shoulda stuck with pitch-a-tent" than "yes, start-ups are evil"
― da croupier, Monday, 17 November 2014 20:15 (nine years ago) link
that sounds about right
― Οὖτις, Monday, 17 November 2014 20:17 (nine years ago) link
outic otm. it's just a new industry sorting itself out, capital catching up to a pretty radical technological break that has made a temporary space for culture that will lose/is losing the battle again.
― mattresslessness, Monday, 17 November 2014 20:21 (nine years ago) link
it's definitely his own fault he's getting sum-ups like this
Stereogum @stereogum 59m59 minutes agoSteve Albini still loves online streaming, hates Miley Cyrus http://bit.ly/1uFPe2c
― da croupier, Monday, 17 November 2014 20:30 (nine years ago) link
hope somebody makes an image for a spotify debate article with Taylor Swift and Bob Seger on the anti-side and dave grohl and steve on the pro
― da croupier, Monday, 17 November 2014 20:32 (nine years ago) link
I'd actually love to see a breakdown of what a band makes now vs. 15-25-35 years ago (be most interesting by some sort of median success metric so the platinum artists of their era vs. whatever exactly approximates that these days on down to the bar bands). Obviously return on recorded media is going to be lower, but cost/distribution of same also less and I do wonder if touring is more lucrative now.
― One bad call from barely losing to (Alex in SF), Monday, 17 November 2014 20:52 (nine years ago) link
Has touring ever been lucrative since recordings became the mainstay of the industry?
― EveningStar (Sund4r), Monday, 17 November 2014 20:54 (nine years ago) link
let's ask Mick Jagger
― Οὖτις, Monday, 17 November 2014 20:55 (nine years ago) link
"ethical treatment of room sound"?
― The Complainte of Ray Tabano, Monday, 17 November 2014 20:56 (nine years ago) link