neil young

lol, looks like Spotify made its choice.

Could end up costing Neil literally hundreds of dollars in streaming royalties

..over the next thirty years.

before taxes.

Robert Christgau put Barn at the very top of his Dean's List (though he says he would score the entire top ten an even ten points apiece):

"I ranked Barn first because self-righteous ‘60s idealism, while always overstated by young wannabes and overrated by old farts, might be of real practical use with fascism on the rise. So in a year when ‘60s totems Eric Clapton, damn right overrated and no one’s idea of a clear thinker either, and Van Morrison, more God-touched but an even bigger crank, began spewing anti-vax/lockdown/government rot, Young’s return to the political and ecological themes of ‘00s releases Greendale, Living With War, and Fork in the Road was an up that touched me deep."

i didn't think barn was that special, but he makes a good point for his rating it so highly. like, "hey they haven't all gone crazy. see???"

aged music act building a barn in the mountains to record an album screams "has this artist gone crazy?"

Studio in the Clouds is in a converted barn but it's a working music studio owned by someone else, Neil just booked time there

https://musicgardens.org/

looks like Dierks Bentley records there a lot

xp

my mistake, it's a restored barn from the 1850s. it's located at that studio then, i take it?

aged music act building a barn in the mountains to record an album screams "has this artist gone crazy?"

But that's normal for Neil.

100% not under dispute

it's just a studio that anyone can book time at, Neil doesn't have anything to do with it as far as I can tell

the building was originally a barn

i quite like the idea of an aging folky recording in a barn.

Just five guys standing around some bales of hay

exactly! like a literal farmer's barn.

"but neil, the acoustics are terrible in there."

"we'll make it work!"

If Neil says it can work, never doubt Neil:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sU0TWE0Le7Q

Xgau's making it No. 1 for topical backstory and references in mostly mumblecore lyrics, not the mostly okay music: pretty typical of his grading for the past few years. Does give Rust Bucket an A minus, but the rambling, kinda meh-ish review doesn't indicate why (except he found out about clitoral vibrators because "Bite The Bullet")

I gave the album more than a few listens in early December, and, well, sorry. But we've all been guilty of anointing an album whose extraordinary qualities only register to you (Kelela and Robert Wyatt for me in the last 15 years).

yeah, but this isn't his vision of Neil's vision, it's his topical overrating , while not indicating anything about how he hears the music, which still seems like some nice ones for the playlist, and that's about it.

Which Robert Wyatt album only registered to you?? Hard to imagine, since there are quite a few of us RW diehards on ILM!

2007's Comicopera.

Oh I don't care for the #1 at all and he hasn't swayed me in years, though he's correct about the Sullivan album.

my friend made a one LP edit of Colorado/Barn

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrdw450H4NIRhygy6oz17O1-90T6EnV3q

I really like this tracklist

definitely gonna check that out. thanks for sharing!

Yeah! Maybe Neil should have done the same.
Alfred---you are not alone (re Comicopera, anyway).

Pandora is already doing ads boasting that they still have Neil.

Comicopera fucking rules, who the hell ever talked shit about that record here? madness. one of his best, Alfred otm.

Yeah, we were pretty positive about it on Robert Wyatt: Classic or Dud?

Well, he's gone. "Thank you Warner Brothers for taking the hit for me. 60 per cent of my streaming revenue worldwide comes from Spotify."
https://neilyoungarchives.com/news/1/article?id=Spotify-In-The-Name-Of-Truth

that's weird. I just checked to see if there was anything still up on spotify and there is still a live set from 1989.Wonder what the loophole was.

It's probably one of those quasi-bootleg radio simulcast things he doesn't have the rights to.

Fwiw all I see on Spotify this afternoon is "Journey Through the Past" from the Inherent Vice soundtrack, his two songs from Dylan's 30th anniversary concert, a demo version of "Birds" from a CSNY reissue, two songs from his 1985 Live Aid performance and the song he did with DRAM for a Netflix movie soundtrack.

I bumped the Best Show thread for this too, but Scharpling is following Neil's lead and yanked The Best Show from Spotify.

Good for him. I saw a few small labels & tastemaker types who do curated playlists announce theyll stop doing so today too. I have zero expectation that any of this will affect any change at Spotify due to the amount that theyre invested in Rogan & his audience, but it's still nice to see people putting their money where their mouth is.

My small hope is just that the conversation around this could at least potentially remind people that Spotify is one service that you can choose to use or choose not to use, rather than thinking of it as synonymous with "music", which is how a lot of people seem to think of it ime.

I actually had a "best of" playlist going for latter day Neil Young tracks, sort of a Decade IV, V & VI. Even though the actual music is gone, the selections are still there, just greyed out.

Lefsetz shared emails from a bunch of people cancelling their accounts as well.

Meanwhile our very own Spotify thread still mostly consists of subscribers complaining about bugs and minor inconveniences to do with changes to the interface

ILM Best of 2021: Pandora edition

I really like Qobuz doesn't get a lot of attention but it sounds better and has some good editorial

Qobuz isn't available in Canada so I went with Tidal, which is so similar to Spotify interface-wise and is the same price but streams lossless that there really isn't much of an argument to not switch

how do the catalogs compare for Qobuz and Tidal w/ Spotify?

If you already pay for Amazon Prime, Amazon Music HD costs 8 bucks and sounds awesome (which makes up for the crappy UI).

I have Amazon Music and agree. mostly because there are small gaps between Amazon and Spotify, things one will have that the other won't.

the interface does suck ass though I agree.

Are Tidal and Qobuz as easy to embed as Spotify? When I'm writing an article online, I can embed the Spotify version of an album or a track right into the middle of the piece. Can I do that with these other streaming services?

https://embed.tidal.com/#/ should help

Barn and Rust Bucket sounded fine to me on free YouTube, as do most other things.

Likewise the version of Amazon Music incl. w Prime, haven't tried HD.

I feel like there can be some gaps in Qobuz, mostly with newer pop/hip hop stuff. though it's European (French I think) so sometimes there are things that aren't on Spotify that are on Qobuz.

Not sure about embedding, though my gut says it's maybe not possible or wouldn't' be as good as Spotify. It's more hi-rez music focused, I don't even think they have podcasts.

I had Tidal for a while on a 3-month deal at I liked it. I'm a little skeptical of their "MQA" encoding which feels bullshitty to me, Qobuz is just straight FLAC.

At the time, Qobuz was cheaper than Tidal hi-rez but I think Tidal lowered their prices since.