Keeping Up With Music

Of course. I mean physical venues / studios for streaming shows.

This should really be on a "communal music in the time of plague" thread, I realise.

Ah I see, yeah I havent heard about any venues setting that up on their own. Although maybe some will start to once they realize that opening back up at 20% capacity wont be sustainable.

Re:the thread question, I used to spend a lot of time haunting RYM & slsk chatrooms & stuff trying to keep up with new music in a systematic/comprehensive way. I gave up on it when I realized it was resulting in me spending a lot of time listening to music that I didn't like (and often didn't expect to like), and it seemed like a perverse situation that was worsening the problem it was supposed to solve. Now I take the organic approach, follow my own tastes and interests completely, and don't stress about it. Good music that's new to me still manages to cross my path, probably at the same rate as before tbh, but I also spend 100% less time listening to stuff I'm not interested in out of some feeling of obligation or FOMO. (Also getting out of writing about music & film has done wonders for my abilities to enjoy both of those things.)

Being OK with ignoring music is a v liberating feeling, my only regret is feeling like I may have wasted some good listening years slogging through shit I didn't care about.

Being OK with ignoring music is a v liberating feeling, my only regret is feeling like I may have wasted some good listening years slogging through shit I didn't care about.

Feeling very seen rn.

I havent heard about any venues setting that up on their own. Although maybe some will start to once they realize that opening back up at 20% capacity wont be sustainable.

The Village Vanguard, Smalls, and the Jazz Gallery in NYC are all doing this to some degree, and on the "new music"/modern composition side, so is National Sawdust. The Vanguard charges $7 to watch a show; I don't know what the others are charging.

xpost When I stopped regularly writing about music the first thing that fell off was keeping up with new stuff. On one hand, it's weird to look at lists of new releases or a year-end thing and not recognize anything. On the other, I figure if it's good enough it will get to me one way or the other. And regardless, the bazilions of albums I've listened to and loved all my life I don't listen to or love any less.

But if you don't keep up with all the new stuff you'd like, isn't there the risk you'll fall into lazy habits, find yourself easy prey to hype, and mostly just listen to what the Pitchfork-industrial complex wants you to?

ime it felt like the opposite - obsessively trying to stay on top of everything felt like being prey to hype after a while. its always good to challenge your ears and listen outside your comfort zones, but for me after a certain point it jsut felt like i was always doubting my taste, which wasnt fun. trying to be an omnivore made me enjoy less. I still explore, but I try to let my taste intuitively lead down whichever rabbit holes it wanders to rather than making it feel task-based

my boring answer to this is always: i keep up because it's sort of my job, but also because i have a legitimate interest in keeping up with artists i love and investigating what's resonating with others. i do not put any pressure on myself to actually keep up though because... why. (i have not knowingly experienced fomo since quitting twitter five years ago)

i've never not had confidence in my taste but i've found i get the most pleasure out of listening when i'm challenging an aesthetic opinion i've settled on. i also find siloing yourself off with genres and artists you already enjoy... silly, bc music is this enormous web where pretty much every style you can think of touches in some way, but whatever

the only time i've ever felt fatigued, like i was forcing myself to get through something, was when i decided to listen to every record pfork rated 8.0 and above in 2004. it was a worse website then. i had the epiphany in like the middle of an architecture in helsinki record, like why am i doing this

btw matt dc thoroughly otm, the social is essential to popular music as we know it. social functions create genres even, cf. correct me if i'm wrong but that's why dancehall exists

i listen to a lot. i always want to listen to more. I've learned to forgive myself! I do okay.

National Sawdust's (NB: I may very well be working for them) concerts are free and they've got a helluva lineup going for both new shows and archival footage that they're making newly available: Tyondai Braxton, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Emily Wells, Madame Gandhi, Julian Lage, Meredith Monk, Rafiq Bhatia... and those are just the pitchfork friendly names. All the artists recording new pieces get paid 1k and get free camera/audio to keep. It's a pretty great program; I don't think anybody else in the US (and possibly this hemisphere) is doing anywhere near this much paid programming with full professional post-production work on the sound/visuals. Give it a peek:
https://live.nationalsawdust.org/digital-discovery-festival
https://live.nationalsawdust.org/archives

and also it's why house exists

and on and on xp

i have LOTS of thoughts about how venues are going to try to pivot to streaming (and mostly fail) but i'll pass for the moment

For another thread - what I was imagining (or rather, expecting them to see an opportunity) is the streaming platforms hiring out studio spaces (which they already have) to bands or promoters. It's a bigger job for live venues to get set up with cameras and video mixing etc., and the space won't otherwise be paying for itself, so to speak.

weeeeeeeell the thing is that basically every venue (in NYC at least) already has a camera/audio setup and streaming to a website/facebook isn't rocket science. The issue is that you can't realistically sell enough "tickets" at even 25% of normal pricing to maintain a staff and pay the artists at the same level unless you have a big enough name. it's the equivalent of opening up a restaurant and losing half your income; it's probably not worth doing it until/unless you can get a grant or a bailout (the latter of which is, sadly, particularly unlikely).

This wackadoo thing that isbell is doing gives you a sense of how people are scrabbling at the sides of this thing, trying to figure out what will work.
https://www.registercitizen.com/entertainment/article/Jason-Isbell-Will-Watch-You-Watching-Him-in-New-15376468.php

i imagine most venues will have to juggle streaming/live shows for most of 2021. It's a dire moment.

I don't feel as overwhelmed as I used to in trying to keep up with new music, I don't know if I've lost interest a bit but I do think my listening has become more scattershot, liking lots of individual releases rather than getting deeply into a particular artist/label/scene or whatever. If I'm honest I'm not finding as many GREAT new albums these days but on the other hand, I keep running Spotify playlists of all the singles I like in a year and the one for 2019 ended up with twice as many tracks as the one for 2010.

ILM is very much still central to me hearing new things - the grime/UK rap and Afropop/Afrodance rolling threads especially. I don't think the board is becoming more conservative, the EOY polls might distort things sometimes maybe?

xpost

Exactly - YouTube or Twitch hiring out spaces directly to bands seems to be more viable. And I don't know what sort of video setups traditional venues have but a single camera pointing at a whole stage isn't really engaging enough to cut it as a substitute.

But if you don't keep up with all the new stuff you'd like, isn't there the risk you'll fall into lazy habits, find yourself easy prey to hype, and mostly just listen to what the Pitchfork-industrial complex wants you to?

During my protracted 85-90% classical phase, I would just wade through a dozen EOY lists in December then cram titles that caught my ear over January and February. I stopped doing that because even a solid cross-section of lists that happen to be most in tune with my preferences represents only about 25-30% (granted, I'm speculating here) of my personal EOY pantheon when I force myself to broaden out and dig deeper at the same time. There's probably a felicitous balance to be struck here, but I've yet to achieve it.

absolutely given up with new music. the 20th century has enough music I haven't heard yet tbh, and it's easier for me to navigate/find what I like because it's all already happened/been documented at length. my favourite new - to me - album this year is Bob Dylan's "slow train coming"

I don't doubt that there is way more around now but there was too much music (for me) to keep abreast of even in the limited general area of 'electronic' music in the early 2000s when I'd visit boutique shops to listen to new releases on vinyl, or look through the reviews section in The Wire and know there was tons I'd never hear, or likely never find a copy of. Not that any of that caused me much anxiety.

I have enough music I've already heard and know I'll enjoy hearing again to keep me satisfied until I die, even with listening all workday long plus some evenings. Anything new I discover is gravy. Yet it still gives me a thrill to find something. "Ooh the collection [of stuff I know I can turn to when I don't know what I want to listen to] has increased!". I'm sure there's lots of great stuff I'm missing out on, but who cares. There's also tons of great food, movies, people, places I'll never get to enjoy . C'est la vie.

I can't quite work out who here "writes for a living" (or similar), anymore. I used to recognise some people. As someone who used to, over a decade ago, I can get a need to have a knowledge about music either generally (that is, being aware of the "latest big thing") or quite specifically (within a genre). I used to listen to music for 16-ish hours a day - that left room to listen to stuff I didn't want to, particularly. In a different job, I get to hear less than half that.

That said, I'd hate to get to the end of the year and think I've only bought this year's Bonnie Prince Billy, Tindersticks, Richard Skelton (and fifteen other names) ...

I should say that I still love hearing new music, especially music that I, well, love. But I do sort of ask myself when I'm listening to new records, will I listen to this and love this the same way I love albums from 20 years ago? Dunno. For example, the new Phoebe Bridgers. I think it's fine but I know for a fact I doubt I would reach for it again in a year, let alone 20 years from now. I don't know if that is me, or it. Then again, I don't think I would have listened to it at all if people weren't singing its praises. On the other hand, one does risk get getting caught in a loop of "best album of the year" hype or whatever. Like when the end of the year comes around and I see these lists of top 50, or top 100 records? I used to make more of an effort to keep up with all the titles, but a long time ago I came to the conclusion that just because they're on a year-end list doesn't make them must hear albums. They're almost just random albums that people put in some random order.

will I listen to this and love this the same way I love albums from 20 years ago?

imo don't care

be free

i've listened to dogleg about 80 times so far this year and i'm looking forward to seeing if i can hit 200

xpost I mean, if I do, it will happen organically! But has broad as my taste may sometimes be, there are so many albums I listen to where I can just tell off the bat, nah, not that into it. But if I spend a lot of time listening to that record, maybe it would rise in my estimation, I don't know. Ironically, I always found trying to keep up with things meant giving things less time than they deserved, because there's so much stuff constantly getting released.

Giving a song/album a chance to grow on me made sense when I paid money for each album. With streaming, it's the opposite: I'm paying for the entire library of music so spending time on 1 thing hoping my opinion of it will improve comes at the expense of giving other music a chance to immediately wow me.

xps to plax

soz pal, I was probably a bit harsh on you earlier, but can't help feeling there would be a slightly middling to average jizz fest on ilm if say The Necks released an album as brilliant as the criminally neglected Tapscott's The Dark Tree and i am an ageing, angry old kneejerk prick!

xp I still try to give any music three listens - music simply doesn't click with me fast enough. I'm even suspicious of music that clicks with me on the first listen! A lot of the time the stuff that clicks that quickly doesn't maintain my interest after a couple listens

Sure, if it feels like too much of a slog, one or two listens is enough, but that's pretty rare now and usually only happens when I challenge my usual tastes. There are still times when the third listen is the one that does it for me, so I feel good about my process

my version of keeping up probably involves listening to way less stuff than a lot of people on here, but still I feel like my new music consumption has been greatly reduced this year, and I don't think there's any record out of the 20 or so new ones in my regular rotation that I am truly super excited about. I've spent way more time digging into and enjoying the 70s ECM catalog. I know there is very likely new music out there that I would really like, but going through all the stuff that is merely ok or worse just feels like too much. I wish it were easier for me to cut through all the noise and find new things that I connect with.

Besides new music there’s also a lot of easily accessible old music. Like hey here’s every record joe Walsh made ever, let’s spend some time with each one

Giving a song/album a chance to grow on me made sense when I paid money for each album. With streaming, it's the opposite: I'm paying for the entire library of music so spending time on 1 thing hoping my opinion of it will improve comes at the expense of giving other music a chance to immediately wow me.

Yeah, I feel this. I'm probably better in tune with my own tastes and inclinations these days as a result. If something doesn't move me in some way on the first listen, I probably won't bother with it again unless I see a few people writing or talking about what moved them about it in a convincing way. Even then, my initial impression rarely budges very much. I laboured through so much average music in my 20s, trying to find something to like about it because smart and cool people said they liked it. I don't really have that time or energy any more.

xxpost In some ways that's part of the problem, or the gift: even if there is good new stuff you might enjoy, you could probably spend a lifetime digesting ECM's '70s output alone! No one can listen to everything all the time, and even the most omnivorous listeners will have blindspots, willful or otherwise. Like the great ILM thread "last classic album you'd never heard before that blew your mind" or whatever. For some reason, I'd never heard Isaac Hayes' "Hot Buttered Soul." Why? Absolutely no idea. I knew it was on all sorts of lists, and I knew Isaac Hayes and his history, but I just never got around to it until, I honestly want to say, maybe after reading Whiney's Public Enemy book and learning how many samples from that album are on "Nation of Millions." Now it's one of my favorite albums. I could listen to it every day. I'm sure there are other albums like that.

I've listened to more new music this year than at any time in the past decade thanks to working from home but I don't know if I'm getting more out of it tbh. sometimes I look through my old ILM poll ballots and think... why did I vote for this again? I must have liked it a lot at the time but I don't even remember what it sounds like? and I have no interest in looking up what they're up to now. 

that's the thing with trying to keep up with too much imo, like there's a lot of music that you might objectively like or find good but true connection is rarer than you might expect. You may like (even love!) a song/album for a few months, but idk if it's worth it if it's not something you'll remember or can be bothered seeking out again five years down the road. 

re imago's original question on whether ILM covers all that it should: I do think that we're getting out of touch with a lot of what younger people are listening to now just because there aren't any zoomers on here lol. I hear what my teenager is listening to on the rare occasions she deigns to leave her bedroom door open and some of it is really cool! most likely made by a youtuber or tiktok-er and they probably don't even have a full EP or album, just a few random tracks here and there. or it's some obscure lo-fi indie dude whose song from 2013 is big among kids cause it was used on a popular fancam edit. 

I also think it's interesting that ILM doesn't even have threads on some major current artists e.g. BTS. I know most of the kpop thread regulars including myself have traditionally not been huge fans of BTS even before they broke through in the US but we're def showing our age imo, in the sense that we're not even trying to discuss this group who is creating, and will continue to have, a massive impact on an entire generation. can't tell if it's a language issue, snobbery, racism, or just none of us being in the right demographic to appreciate them properly. (and of course the gender thing - ILM-ers have always been more appreciative of female popstars and girl groups and take boybands less seriously.) 

I don’t understand how TikTok works as a music discovery platform. The clips are 15 seconds long? How can you get into something via a 15-sec. snippet? Is the idea to check out the full song on YouTube or something?

15 seconds is more than enough to get hooked on a piece of music, even 5 seconds could be

But where are kids hearing the full songs? They must go off to Spotify or someplace, right?

yeah spotify or youtube or bandcamp or soundcloud or wherever else people get their music. eye catching dancing/visuals + an ear wormy hook or chorus in under a minute is usually enough to get kids to search out the songs (and sadly also a method that’s much faster and more convincing than reading a two minute positive review).

Xxxp I alternate between extremes of going wide and going deep. I go through phases of collecting and listening back to lots of different stuff sort of ravenously. Basically just sampling everything for months or even years at a time without getting into any of it too deeply. Then i'll go back and pick a few things out of that, and I'll listen to the same 3-5 records almost exclusively for months (at least).

I don't really ever worry about missing out on what I haven't heard. What scares me a lot more is that i might not hear something again, or that I'll only hear it so many more times.

There are no artists I follow, really. A crate digger friend remarked that I'm "extremely album-oriented" and that's accurate. Like, most people have artists they love, and want to investigate those discographies and I... don't. I mean there are artists who have made albums that are all time favorites, that i love more than life itself... and i have never even borhtered listening to any of their other work even once. I don't feel I need it for whatever reason. I don't know why. When inwas a kid and could only afford a handful of albums a year, maybe a dozen or a bit more if I was very lucky, I only bought albums by artists I'd never heard before. With very, very few exceptions. It felt, like, wastefully extravagant to have more than one album by the same people back then. I had friends who would buy every Pavement album before checking out someone else and I was actually... disgusted by that!

Now i am properly ranting sorry. So, yeah, i go through these phases, and it really has nothing to do with keeping pace with all the amazing things coming out, I'm completley disengaged from that.

I don't force myself to like anything either. If i hear something once, and it doesn't either a. make me want to play it again straight away or b. Leave a funny linering aftertase or something that sticks with me and makes me want to play it again EVENTUALLY. that's it. A lot of my favorite records are the latter kind tho.

youtube comments on music videos are now as full of tiktok-related comments as they are of "(x) sent me here" or "who's listening to this in 2020?" or "this is when music was great, not like now"

No BTS thread is surprising! They derserve a thread

My method of music discovery has been the same since I was 13 - I mainly read a lot about music, old and new, and if it looks interesting, in the pre-digital age I'd rent LPs/CDs in the libary and tape/CDR them, and for the past 22 years I'd download and dunk it into my library. Plex or iTunes will then feed it to me when I play random albums, filter by genre & then shuffle, etc. Keeping up for me just means keep reading about new music and listening to it.

Re: boy bands, I don't think ILM has ever really engaged with the phenomenon. Maybe I'm wrong but I don't remember much serious talk about the musical merits of Take That, Hanson or Westlife in the "ILM golden age".

Take That and Westlife were irredeemable shit, dunno enough about Hanson to judge, Backstreet/NSYNC might be a better comparison as they had a few decent pop hits.

I don't get BTS to be honest, think it's probably just not for me.

eye catching dancing/visuals + an ear wormy hook or chorus in under a minute is usually enough to get kids to search out the songs

When was this ever not enough?

my response was to morrisp on tiktok as a music discovery platform.

Re: boy bands, I don't think ILM has ever really engaged with the phenomenon. Maybe I'm wrong but I don't remember much serious talk about the musical merits of Take That, Hanson or Westlife in the "ILM golden age".

yes and i've always wondered why that was. even for kpop, there are tons of great boy group songs posted on the rolling threads every year but the ones that crossover onto wider ILM and make it onto the EOY 77 have almost all been by girl groups (2ne1, f(x), red velvet, blackpink, loona. lone male exception: G-Dragon).

I am not a huge fan of BTS but their songs are better than 95% of boyband songs from the 90s/00s, and a lot of it sounds, well, like a lot of other pop music that ILM usually likes. so yes, it's surprising they don't have a thread yet. anyway, my main point was that even on a forum as expansive and diverse as ILM, there are massive blindspots, and i'm sure there's lots of other genres/subgenres that we're ignoring.

start a thread, Roz. I would be happy to listen to BTS, just nothing has grabbed me in any of the songs I've heard so far.

i just said i wasn't a fan or else i would have started one already lol. my fave is prob Dope.

But if you don't keep up with all the new stuff you'd like, isn't there the risk you'll fall into lazy habits, find yourself easy prey to hype, and mostly just listen to what the Pitchfork-industrial complex wants you to?

There is no such thing as 'keeping up'. In any given month the amount of music you or anyone else listens to is absolutely dwarved by what you don't listen to. There are vast amounts of music being released, plenty of it great, that never gets talked about or shared here or anywhere else.

So "keeping up" is entirely illusory. And even the most self-consciously wide-ranging of listeners are limited by their routes of discovery, whether that's ILM or Pitchfork or streaming services or crate digging or anything else. Some of the people who make the least effort to "keep up" in the traditional sense have the most interesting and often the most rewarding music habits, people can spend entire years down the rabbit hole of one genre.

Phrased as gauchely provocative as I could muster tbh, but the formation of canons is definitely part of this discussion. I rather admire those who specialise deeply in a more restricted area (and then stay in that lane) but I can't imagine doing that myself