pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

my opinion could yet change, but i think damn. is certainly a better album. it's better than most albums, to be fair.

Haven't heard this yet but I will be astounded - astounded - if it's anywhere near as great as DAMN, from what everyone's been saying

Haven't heard the Quelle Chris either ;)

Everyone overrated DAMN! when it came out.

― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Monday, May 16, 2022 8:41 AM

even pfork, i guess.

(i thought DAMN. was a huge disappointment at the time. it made me start saying things like "welp, guess kl is just not my kind of music.")

Haven't heard the Quelle Chris either ;)

― imago, Monday, May 16, 2022 10:54 AM (thirty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

it's really good!

They haven't been afraid to give Kanye low scores despite him owning the news section

― Chappies banging dustbin lids together (President Keyes), Monday, May 16, 2022 9:45 AM (five hours ago)

they gave ye a 7.1 and jesus is king 7.2. granted both are lower than this kendrick score but are still inflated by 2+ points and i'm being nice. it wasn't until donda that they acknowledged what had been clear for several years which is that his music isn't good anymore

this year i've been impressed by them resisting rosalia backlash and giving this kendrick album a mid 7, two big albums where they could've gone either way and i think they nailed both scores

A solid, thoughtful review that I (for one) am grateful isn’t a fawning rave.

The kind of review with which I'll disagree with judgments but respect its intelligence.

https://pitchfork.com/features/article/how-nfts-are-shaping-the-way-music-sounds/

By now, you would be forgiven for being skeptical of, if not outright exhausted by, the entire concept of NFTs, the cryptocurrency-adjacent digital vouchers that took over the art world last year and quickly infiltrated the music industry.

...For the most part, these were business endeavors by artists with vast experience in branding, household names simply lending their imprimatur to NFTs the same way they might license songs for car commercials.

...nothing that their most equipped proponents have done with them so far feels very revolutionary.

...Still, corporate America has been betting on NFTs the way regular people buy lottery tickets

... Holding back our skepticism for a minute, let’s consider a future in which NFTs are a normalized way of releasing music, no different from uploading your songs to Spotify or selling a record on Bandcamp.

...Looking past the blockchain aspect, the files that music NFTs represent could be thought of as similar to a Bandcamp stream,

...So what flowers might bloom from this unwieldy and already-polarizing new format? An NFT music chart called Top of the Blocks, published weekly since March 2021, offers clues to what’s worked so far. The chart is based on sales volume, and the amounts required to crack the top 10 have soared over the last year, from the equivalent of $200 or $300 to $2,000 or $3,000 prior to cryptocurrency’s recent crash, says founder Robin Spottiswoode. Though electronic music dominated the chart in the early days,

...n the summer of 2021, Berlin-based singer-songwriter Violetta Zironi—a former X-Factor competitor who placed third in 2013 but didn’t find much industry success thereafter—vowed to give music her all for one more year. If it didn’t pan out, she would quit. “And then, when I went home for Christmas, my mom told me about NFTs,” she recalls.

...A lot of NFT-based music may not sound drastically different from what streaming has wrought—but could some characteristics of NFTs help music that’s a bit weirder? Some of the biggest nonmusical NFT projects have been released in mega-batches that include thousands of similar but distinct pieces of art, with repeating elements arranged in different configurations. For instance, CryptoPunks are a set of 10,000 algorithmically generated pixelated cartoon characters, some of which have rare lipstick or mohawks that somehow make them more valuable—and even the most ordinary CryptoPunk is still trading for about $100,000 these days.

^^^are you fucking me? gtfo

...The gambling-like appeal of NFTs shouldn’t be overlooked. “Suddenly these artists have these collectors who are financially invested in their future success, which is a huge shift,” says Spottiswoode. “There are definitely people that invest a lot in music NFTs because they think it’s the future.”

The speculative aspect, with risk diffused from a single patron or label A&R to “true fans” and wealthy patrons, could also affect the sound and creation of music. Will artists think differently about the way they plan and pace their careers? If the music matters less than the investment and proof of concept, then maybe more outré sounds will keep bubbling to the top of the NFT charts. One optimistic view is that artists could become less likely to make short-term compromises that will burn them out. Dance-pop singer-songwriter Aluna, who recently raised around $13,000 from a set of 69 music NFTs, tells me, “You need to think about the possibilities of building something that you and your fans own forever.”

All of these fun hypotheticals aside,

...“We’re not going to see all the messy stuff,” says Dwight Torculas, co-founder of the music NFT platform Mint Songs. “Artists are going to make money off of the tokenization of their assets, and the secondary royalty sales from it, and then we as the end consumer will be able to participate in a streaming app that allows us to listen to music for free.”

Great article Marc Hogan!!!!!

i didn't excerpt all the paragraph sized "anecdotes" about unknown musicians who have recently made it rich. Marc Hogan (and Pitchfork/Conde Nast) are effectively advising all of their young readers to buy crypto and NFTs, highlighting the rare cases where it did "work" for some shitty musician, and minimizing and downplaying all of the risk. Did Marc Hogan bother to interview one who thinks all of this is an awful idea? Does he know anyone that minted an NFT and totally failed? That might seem similar to the stories of millions of artists who have tried to sell something and failed. but the whole reason people (I) get worked up about NFTs and Crypto is because it is NOT just some mediocre piece of art that wasn't purchased, and lands in the basement storage soon later. The bare minimum of participation in NFT requires buying into the whole crypto mindset. You have to. That, alone, is not something to be minimized And god, if some person really likes your tacky art so much that they buy an NFT, then you're REALLY into crypto, at that point.

i didn't excerpt all the paragraph sized "anecdotes" about unknown musicians who have recently made it rich. Marc Hogan (and Pitchfork/Conde Nast) are effectively advising all of their young readers to buy crypto and NFTs, highlighting the rare cases where it did "work" for some shitty musician, and minimizing and downplaying all of the risk. Did Marc Hogan bother to interview one who thinks all of this is an awful idea? Does he know anyone that minted an NFT and totally failed? That might seem similar to the stories of millions of artists who have tried to sell something and failed. but the whole reason people (I) get worked up about NFTs and Crypto is because it is NOT just some mediocre piece of art that wasn't purchased, and lands in the basement storage soon later. The bare minimum of participation in NFT requires buying into the whole crypto mindset. You have to. That, alone, is not something to be minimized And god, if some person really likes your tacky art so much that they buy an NFT, then you're REALLY into crypto, at that point.

I read the entire article and the closing paragraph is definitely more of a shrug than an endorsement?

The only somewhat pro-NFT hook is “maybe artists will do more nonlinear or experimental things” but the idea that people without much of an interest in music at large are doing most of the buying/trading is pretty clear imo

full disclosure, I used to drink at the same bars as Marc and see him around

did he ow2n an ape?

mh....hmmm.... :)

Genuinely enjoy Hogan's writing, both articles and reviews. Haven't had a chance to read this one yet but a couple random NFT thoughts:

I have always thought the concept of singular pieces of music owned like a painting or a sculpture was bizarre, unless you are keen to buy a lesser work or from a lesser artist. There are probably some exceptions though: a reclusive and/or aging musician with a rabid fanbase (e.g., Jeff Mangum?), live renditions, "from the vault" type demos, etc.

the closing paragraph is a land-of-contrasts shrug because the author has no particular insight into any of this but had to write the article anyway in order to fill the space between banner ads for nfts

seemed like a decent round-up, although there were a few artists I've noticed that have been talking about this junk for a while who I'd like to have been included

honestly, it's all noise to me and a round-up of what's actually happening, who is doing this music NFT thing, and to what end, is useful

the answer (as addressed in the article) seems to be people who already have tons of money/exposure doing it as just another platform and people I haven't heard of doing one-off little experimental clips

I don't know that the attitude that this junk can't be covered in any non-critical way as an anti-crypto excess ethos is especially useful? I've mostly eschewed the recent vinyl mega-revival (buy your Taylor Swift album on vinyl at Target!) as mostly wasteful as my impression is that most people are buying these as aesthetic objects and not something to regularly play, which I've been guilty of to some extent. Music NFTs are so low-volume in the larger stakes and the genuinely grifty/grifted people who just want to buy and trade.. something.. are doing that regardless and if some musician wants to grab a slice of that, fuck it

legislate all power-intensive coin farms out of existence, though

as far as how this is changing art (artists making dashed-off pieces, endless versions of the same song with minor tweaks)--it is a bit interesting from a historical angle, but not more so than artists making albums with lots of short tracks to game the streaming revenue system, or all the other internety b.s.

I tend to read partway into any summary of the current music/internet experiment landscape before David Letterman's "Is This Anything?" bit starts wandering into my head

if an artist is into NFTs, i simply stop paying attention to them or their art. Holly and Mat were once friends-- now they're dead to me.

That's what's up

These are people who died, died
They all got into blockchain, and just died

also posted today (coincidentally I'm sure)

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/latasha-indie-artist-nft-cryptocurrency_n_62548388e4b0723f800fd92d

The 34-year-old is creating freedom in her music career through cryptocurrency and non-fungible tokens ― essentially unique digital assets (usually art), transmitted on a cryptocurrency blockchain, most popularly Ethereum. These NFTs are housed in the ever-evolving metaverse, a term The New York Times describes as a convergence of virtual reality and a digital second life.

After years of dealing with an industry that typically undervalues musicians, Latashá set out to become one of the first artists to publish her music videos to the blockchain as NFTs for others to purchase. As a result, she’s seen more success in the past year than she imagined possible.

She told HuffPost that she wants to share that knowledge with artists who are often disempowered.

“I really do believe that being the artist that I am right now, and in crypto, I’m finding a home for me,” Latashá said. “I push for women rappers to find space in crypto because I think they will really win here more than they ever have. And I know for so many women rappers, they dealt with trials. I don’t want to see that for artists anymore. I just want to see people in their wellness.”

Hooray for free enterprise

Summer Walker does a lot of tweets like this

Hey y'all! @SnakethereumCC, a dope new NFT project with exclusive holder benefits that has got me obsessed with the NFT space. Dey Rgiving away 1x Free #nft & 10x WL spots.

Follow @SnakethereumCC
RT & LIKE
Tag 2 friends
Presale is May the 30th. Don't miss it out
#paidpromo pic.twitter.com/qxCtpsJNIW

— SUMMER WALKER (@IAMSUMMERWALKER) May 23, 2022

#paidpromo

If there's truly a "democratizing" aspect to it then I guess cool, but crypto/NFT is absolutely a "this is where I get off the train" moment for me personally (even in a professional context, i.e. my job, I grit my teeth when it comes up).

Don't you want to see people in their wellness though?

I'll catch their wellness avatars in the M3t4verse

in other news, i thought this was a good article.

https://pitchfork.com/features/article/the-woes-of-being-addicted-to-streaming-services/

lots of things are technically democratizing but uncool tbf

nfts are an obvious scam and someone at conde nast is looking for a little help fattening/legitimizing their "holdings." pfork's a useful idiot, but we knew that already.

I'm pretty fuckin cynical but I would wager that the "Music and Technology" week was not a top-down Conde imperative to sell NFTs and probably just an idea to make the incredibly boring world of modern music look interesting.

The ads are for Amazon TV show Night Sky, which my have prompted some tech synergy but I'm not going to look up what Amazon TV show Night Sky is about

sissy spacek! j.k. simmons!

not a top-down Conde imperative to sell NFTs

agreed. they just got nfts out of the way first because they're obviously the dumbest.

let's see how the week unfolds.

problem with these music and tech pieces is they're largely fairly banal or even outright stupid if you pay any attention to the tech world - NFTs are a tiny niche that absolutely aren't the future of music or going to have any sort of impact on how music sounds more broadly and uncritically hyping them up is very irresponsible, and the "metaverse" probably doesn't mean too much for music right now because it's not a coherent concept yet, just some fragmented things a marketing buzzword is trying to tie together

The Cure Wish retro review was trite and poorly written, I thought. And the rating about double what it should be.

Really? I thought it was fine and needed saying.

I thought it was good (I don’t know the album).

I guess I just dislike the record a lot, but the potted-history felt like the writer had a quick flip thru the discography and a few articles rather than knowing the band and its oeuvre. And “Any one song from these records has enough character, vision, and atmosphere to spawn the careers of five entirely new bands”? Please. I finally bailed at “dark, artsy music”.

It was the brief history of the band as seen from the vantage point of the immediate post-Wish comedown. Bit confusing to follow and plenty of cliches to be found, however if all you know is Disintegration or "Just Like Heaven" it serves as a fine context-provider for the album.

(Agree the rating is too high.)

Wish >>>> Disintegration

but I'm an outlier, therefore the rating makes sense

It’s refreshing to see one of these Sunday reviews that jumps right into taking about the album, instead of detailing each band member’s first experience touching an instrument etc.

Alfred as much as I respect your knowledge and taste, I'm one of "those" Cure fans

idk that score is about what i'd have expected considering its place in the cure's discography

i'd put it just a little lower but i don't tend to rate cure albums that highly

Same. They recorded no "masterpieces" or whatever but every album b/w 1979 and 1992 has great songs, some more than others

Have long considered Disintegration overrated and even then, rating it below Wish makes me chuckle.

Will say this: as implied in the review, the b-sides from Wish are *easily* their best. Some of them are better than 80% of Disintegration.

Bit disappointed this review completely overlooked Mixed Up; surely that was an indicator that things were reaching terminal velocity?

the b-sides from Wish are *easily* their best.

I had to change my shorts in July 2016 when they played "This Twilight Garden" in the first 40 minutes.

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/the-cure-wish/ fwiw

I’ll be basic and say “Disintegration” is their best album. That said I don’t think I’d rate it higher than 8.