Avillia

Ally left another crash and a ride at my house after last rehearsal, so today I was like a kid in a candy store. Damn, drums are fun. I'm getting fairly legitimate at it, too--I can pull off most relatively simple (though not braindead simple) things solidly, but when it gets fast I get increasingly shaky. That, I imagine, will come with time. In the meantime, it's a damn lot of fun.

Revisited some Zoot Sims today in the car. Really solid sax man, with a really mellow tone. One of the less-appreciated of the great jazzmen. Dig him, if you haven't yet.

Also, rediscovered some of the Monk Quartet recordings they put up on the Youtubes. There is some wicked good stuff in there. Rouse is nuts, and is similarly underappreciated on the saxophone. See! This.

Feels good seeing the people I've been missing from back home. Cory, my cousin (a month younger than I am, and like a brother to me) is coming down on Thursday, which will kick some ass. Writing lots of music, several possibilities for jobs. It's working out.

Yeah.

Baby you can drive my... Cars...

Obtained ginger beer today. 2 new brands. Neither is that heavy on the ginger, but one tastes rather like sarsparilla, and both are rather tasty in their own ways.

I've had this weird drive recently to work on some sort of visual art, specifically some type of comic ish thing. I know I can't be spreading myself too thin, but it's something I've really been feeling like doing. If I end up getting anything worked out to the point of my satisfaction, then I'll put it up here.

Anyway.

Recently rediscovered the Cars. You know, I'm not really one for pop rock, but damn. Such good songwriting, it's amazing. The little things--say, the synth riff in "Just What I Needed" are just all spot-on, exactly what they need to be. And it's not just the singles--their entire albums are full of excellent, well-done songs, unlike many bands of their genre and period.

Also: Drums are goddamn fun. I need to pursue the drums more seriously, because they are goddamn fun.

(PS-excuse the title.)

Check in the appropriate box.

Rehearsal most of the day today with K-skeet & Ally. Ridiculously productive, resulting in two songs that will probably end up being better than anything we'd previously done. Just need lyrics now. We'll do some recording on Friday with Tom there.

Lyrics are fantastically hard, depending on what you decide you want to do with them. It's usually almost impossible to make them actually match the music, because music communicates differently. The best you can do is use words that go along with the general sense of the song. Right now I'm trying to work on one that just doesn't seem to have a specific set of words that will flow with it, and everything I do keeps coming out wrong. Arrgh.

Anyway, I've been feeling pretty shitty. Still no job, few leads on jobs, and though the band is coming along well, I keep winding up stuck in my house absorbing the stresses my family exudes (my mother and I create a damn lot of tension when we're in the same place). You know, I go upstairs or out to the park and read or practice, but I feel really lame and unproductive still unless I'm playing with the band or actively on the job search. Also having troubles because some of my old friends seem to be changing, and some seem not to like me anymore. I guess I still have some getting used to it to do.

Sly.

I definitely don't post as much back here in Maine for some reason. This runs contrary to logic as I have much more free time here in Maine.

Thoughts at the moment:

1) Don't hate me for having "blank wall, red paint" as the title of this blog. Yeah, it's a shitty title. But it's a shitty blog, and anyway, having to title the blog itself intrinsically kind of sucks. I could have gone with the classic "Owen yells about whatever," but. No.

2) I went on a walk/run for about 2 hours tonight. On this excursion, guess how many people I passed?

One.

Just one.

And it was only 9:30 or 10 at night.

.'. South Portland is very different from NYC.

3) TS&TL have several gigs piling up in June. I think up to 4 potential ones right now and that counts zero grad parties, of which there are likely to be many. Come check us out. We'll also be recording a demo starting... tomorrow, actually.

I'll try to make more of a point to get back here when I have something interesting to talk about.

A standing ovation. (in my pants...?)

Lionel Loueke is an African jazz-ish-kind of-not really guitarist and vocalist. Saw his trio tonight at the Blue Note. It was one of the most mind-blowingly intense musical experiences I have ever had. You definitely need to check this guy out. Even if you're not into jazz, you won't be disappointed.

Packing up and heading home tomorrow. Should be getting in around 8 or so. Feels kind of weird leaving this place.

Lucky day.

Bob Barr just announced his candidacy as a Libertarian.

Having a pretty well-respected, strongly conservative third party candidate could actually be a major factor in the fall. He'll take a lot of votes that would have gone to McCain, leaving the Democrats in a stronger position by far.

Shyeah.

Recog.

Whoa. Heard some Incubus on the radio in Downstein today, which reminded me that they existed. Remember those guys? It's been a damn while, but they were one of those bands that sort of defined the 90s. Have to give their stuff a re-listen soon; as I remember, they were pretty legit.

I've got you under my skin

Year is almost at its close. Trying to get the things done now that I never had time to do this year. Haven't made it to the Brooklyn bridge, but I'll try to do that tonight or tomorrow night. Funny how you can be in the city for two semesters by yourself and do less NYC-ish stuff than a tourist does in a weekend (particularly when you're broke--the bank account has officially dropped below $0).

I'm a little stressed out about leaving. Largely this is because I know I'm gonna miss her like hell. I know we'll be seeing each other a good deal, but it'll still be very different from living across the hall from one another. I know we'll adapt to it, though. Just might be rough at first.

Mother's day is today. Did you remember?

Finally saw Forrest Gump for the first time last night. It's a beautiful film.

Country yard

Had one of the best days of my life yesterday. Spent most of the day in Central Park with Christea--we walked from the southeast corner more than halfway up before stopping around Belvedere Castle to hang around for a while. It was a great experience, but it also made me remember how much I miss the natural world. Everything here is artificial--even the nature is artificial. And there is something to be said for that, and it works for some people I guess. Myself, though, I recently realized that I can't live out my life in a place where you can't see the stars at night.

Also, NYC will probably be the first place bombed in WWIII, which looks like it could be coming before too long--dig the news as pertains to the Russia situation.

Anyway.

The year is almost done, so I gotta start packing. It'll be sad to see my room stripped bare of all the things that have made it feel like home for the past eight months or so, but I'll know I'm headed to a place where I have people to make music with and good friends to be with. I still don't have a job lined up, but I'm always working on that. Christea is coming up to visit a few times, and I'm going to try to make it down to Baltimore at least twice. Everything in its right place.

Show me the world as I'd love to see it.

I think I have started working out, to an extent, how drones apply to my music. I still like having drum or other rhythmic textures--but sometimes they end up being just that, textures. Vocals can be used like that, too. An obvious example of this stuff is Radiohead's "Sit Down, Stand Up (Snakes & Ladders)" which is a giant crescendo of mostly ambient sound leading up to an emotional, many-textured climax with only three words for lyrics--"The Rain Drops." I dunno, that may not completely encompass what I'm saying, but I am working on a project for my Synthesis class which I'm trying to turn into a good example of that, and if it turns out fairly well, I'll put it up online.

This semester is winding down finally. 2 finals and that project left, all pretty well spaced out. I can get some music in, definitely. Then home to work as much as possible wherever I find gainful employ, and to play with the Ladykillers pretty much every second I can. I have a lot of musical energy floating around waiting to get out... this summer is gon' be insane.

Next semester will probably be just as nuts, now I'm thinking about it. My schedule:

M: Theory III, Concert Management
Tu: Recording Technology, Stats
W: Theory III, Collegium, Music History III
Th: Recording Technology, Stats, Music Publishing

2 major perks for next semester:
-No class on Friday
-No class till 11 am anyday

Yeah.

Out with the old.

So, at some point I'll edit this up and make it much better. Feedback in the meantime?

In the fall of 2007, the record industry nearly had a heart attack. One of the biggest bands in the world, Radiohead, announced that they would be releasing their newest album online without the assistance of any record company—and that they would be allowing their customers to pay whatever price they wished in purchasing the set, including nothing at all. This move set off alarms across the business, and sounded a lot like "a death knell for the major labels, as Trent Reznor and Madonna immediately announced they would follow suit and find new ways to release their music" (Levy). After the initial, massively popular download period, Radiohead proceeded to release the album in a physical, CD copy—on very small independent record labels—and the business relaxed, at least somewhat. Still, the event was a major benchmark in the transition of music sales to a more digital-based market, and it's continuing to send out shockwaves.

Whatever else Radiohead's experiment may have been, it was a reflection of a music business that had lost track of where it was headed. The industry's reaction would almost certainly not have been such a negative one had it not been for the very dreary reality already facing record labels: their business is becoming less and less relevant. EMI, the fourth-largest of the world's record labels with an over 15% market share, was recently bought out by an investment firm for relatively little—and since that time, it's still been floundering; just recently, EMI's management announced plans for the near future such that "as many as 2,000 EMI employees--about a third of the label's staff--would be laid off" (Raymer). The reason, on the surface, appears simple: record sales have been in constant decline since the early 2000s (famously, over 1,000,000 copies of Robbie Williams's latest album were sold by EMI to "a firm that intended to recycle them into paving materials in China" after being returned by the retailers, unsold), and with less and less of their product moving with the same promotion and production costs, the labels are losing cash flow (Raymer).

However, that answer isn't as simple as it seems. There are a multitude of reasons why the labels are losing revenue; clearly, the diminishing quantity of actual sales is a part (with its own complex causes), but Radiohead's example shows us that the industry's current incarnation is not working so well on the artistic side, either. Joe Levy, in an article for the Rolling Stone, puts it succinctly (if a little harshly): "What's a label for? The old answer--manufacturing and distributing CDs and promoting them to radio--no longer holds much sway now that music has digitally dematerialized and radio has been deregulated into one vast strip mall. Everyone acknowledges that the labels as we know them are done" (Levy). Though Levy may have been exercising some hyperbole with his last statement—"everyone..."—there's certainly a lot of truth to the idea that many of the functions a label used to perform have become as obsolete as the 8-track cassette. David Byrne, legendary musician and songwriter, wrote an article in WIRED magazine which outlined the basic functions of record companies, then and now; essentially, the main functions were dependent upon the sales of actual, physical copies of the album, produced and distributed by the company. This was the foundation of the industry, and Byrne disagrees with it: "what is called the music business today... is not the business of producing music. At some point it became the business of selling CDs in plastic cases, and that business will soon be over" (Byrne). Brian Eno has an even more grim outlook on the record companies' role: "The only idea they have is that they can give you a big advance... that's all they represent now: capital" (qtd. in Byrne).

All of this, of course, would appear to mean one thing: the record labels need to start finding a way of operating that's more in line with the present market, which is increasingly in tune with digital sales as opposed to physical, singles as opposed to albums, and complete accessibility over a major-label dominated scene. And, if handled correctly, this movement could be a huge boon to the artistic community: the Internet provides unknown artists, without the financial backing of a record label, with the ability to present themselves and their music to the world (in addition to letting established bands like Radiohead release music themselves directly to their fans). Furthermore, Levy thinks Radiohead is exemplifying something else that needs to be done: "Radiohead's masterstroke was putting the audience in control. Control is something that music fans--many of them believers in the specious conspiracy theory that the record industry forcefeeds them garbage... haven't felt enough of" (Levy). Raymer agrees on the nature of the movement: "it's becoming clear that decisions about the future of the music biz won't be made by the majors but by consumers and artists" (Raymer). Such gains in control will inevitably be popular in the same way that Robin Hood's actions were—the record business has developed a reputation as a business composed of slimeballs and lowlifes, who take money from the poor artists and fans while pushing meaningless music; this will likely seem, to the public, to be their just rewards.

The labels, unsurprisingly, see it differently; what is surprising is the way in which they are handling this shift of control to the consumer. As the majors gradually lose their stranglehold, they seem to be falling into two strategies: 1) try to find and adapt to a new, more viable model, and 2) try to keep the current model as relevant as possible. Both of these strategies seem to make sense (the former, perhaps, more than the latter); the way in which they have tried to attack them, however, is questionable at best. The main effort being put forth on the traditional model front is, unfortunately, the infamous RIAA lawsuits; rather than try harder to market albums over singles, or any such thing, the labels have decided to try to "scare the public away from new markets and technologies" (Raymer). This clearly isn't helping their Sheriff of Nottingham image much—by "putting the law above the people," and showing their willingness to single out individuals and sue them for more than they can possibly afford, the industry effectively shows that they do not care for the average consumer (Guzman).

On the adaptation side, the majors seem to be faring equally poorly. The main new concept floating around between the major record industry players at the moment is something called a "360" or equity deal, in which the label deals with not just record sales, but touring, merchandising, publishing, clothing lines, and anything else they can think of for their artist, essentially building them into a brand. These new tasks represent both new functions to replace the outdated ones (an honorable concept) and new revenue streams to supplement the falling record sales income. However, there are inherent flaws in these strategies, not least that while the label would be taking a significant chunk from each of these streams of income to the artist, almost none of the labels doing these deals actually have the capacity to handle all of the angles covered in a 360 deal. They would simply be contracting out the jobs, just as the artist normally would, and taking a cut (leading to the criticism that "the strategy is just another way for the majors to take money out of an artist's pocket") (Marshall). Furthermore, if a label is engaged in all aspects of an artist's career, it'll be putting forth money for every side. The upshot of this is that a) the labels won't be willing to sign nearly as many bands, instead preferring to cultivate and massively promote only a few; b) those bands chosen by the labels will be singularly mass-market types of acts in the vein of a Hannah Montana or a Nickelback, and c) the artists signed to a 360 deal will be unlikely to have much creative freedom (Byrne: "I doubt that creative decisions will be left in the artist's hands... The equity partner simply has too much at stake).

Not that the "band as brand" concept is inherently wrong; it's just not a model that will work for the majority of artists. One of the most successful of the branding artists, Sean "Diddy" Combs, had this to say on the subject: "It takes a certain type of superstar who understands at all times what it takes to be in the middle of a 360 situation. This is not going to solve the labels' problem" (qtd. in Marshall). Indeed, it's very hard to imagine a Suicide or a Pixies signing a branding-style deal—though they are some of the most influential bands of the 20th century, a Frank Black cologne line is simply not realistic. But right now, the major labels are only interested in signing new talent to these all-inclusive career deals. The end result of the 360 system, then, would be fewer, more commercially driven well-known acts—this in a time when the general movement is toward public and artist control. It remains to be seen to what extent the commercialized pop music coming from these deals will exacerbate the labels' problems, pushing the public more into the domain of independent artists and of control on the Internet.

An important question remains unanswered: Why the decline in sales? The record labels still receive money for sales over iTunes and its ilk. There is not, as yet, a clear cause; many point to internet file-sharing services, but it's noteworthy that since the advent of audiocassettes, piracy has been a very common practice; though it is a factor, it is not enough to account for the sharp decline that continues to be seen each year. Raynor provides a fairly simple explanation—the "proliferation of viable alternatives to the established business model"—but it's really too vague to help altogether that much; does he refer here to the tendency of iTunes users to grab just one track from an album or artist rather than investing in the whole album, or maybe to the new downloading subscription services which have begun to be launched?

The answer, however, may be even more basic than that. On the first day of any economics course, and on the first page of any economics textbook, one finds a discussion of the nature of the word "economics," defined as "the study of choice under conditions of scarcity," that is, the way in which people allocate their resources; the relative scarcity of, or difficulty of access to, a product gives it its value (Hall & Lieberman). Is it not, then, possible that people have begun to see digital copies of music as not having monetary value? There are, after all, infinite copies awaiting the consumer of any given piece of music. In addition, this would explain the continuation of piracy, certainly, and why it seems relatively tame compared to most crimes, even when called a form of stealing (a survey taken in 2005 found that "more people consider parking in a fire lane a serious crime" than illegal file-sharing) (Guzman).

At the same time, however, the example of Radiohead gives compelling evidence that people still value recorded music, even in the intangible form of a download. Out of 1.2 million copies of the album downloaded in the first few weeks, the average price paid per download was about $6 US (excluding those who downloaded it for free, who comprised around half). These first few weeks' sales netted the band more than their prior album, Hail to the Thief (2003), had made them altogether—almost $3,000,000. Of course, as Thom Yorke of Radiohead said, "the only reason we were able to get away with this, the only reason anyone even gives a shit, is that we've gone through the whole mill of the business in the first place" (qtd. in Byrne & Yorke). By that, of course, he means that Radiohead is by far one of the most popular bands in the world today, and they knew that they had their fans' respect. Still, it says good things about the consumer's view of the value of music that the download performed so well.

Which brings us, of course, to the essential question: what is it that Radiohead, or any musician, label, or other purveyor of music, is actually selling? This may be an unanswerable question, but what can, perhaps, be discovered is why we buy copies of that music, or what it is that we value therein. Byrne, of course, hopes that the industry will move away from "the business of selling CDs in plastic cases"; as he said, "that business will soon be over" (Byrne). He suggests, rather, that what the record companies should be valuing more—and, perhaps, what their audiences value—is "the relationship and the emotional thing," the intangible connection between artist and fan. As the Internet allows the artist, like Radiohead, to deliver their music directly to their audience, maybe it's that connection which will become the new focus of the music business at long last.

Works Cited

Levy, Joe. "Just $9,250 a Song!" Rolling Stone.1038 (2007): 83.

Marshall, Samantha. "Diddy on the Art of 360 Deals." Crain's New York Business 23.47 (2007): 3.

Raymer, Miles. "Give Up the Ship." Reader 37.19 (2008): 45.

Reporter, Monica G. P. "Music to our Arrrs ; Sure, Pirating Songs Off the Internet is Illegal, but Music Execs Need to See that this is a Populist Rebellion." Seattle Post - Intelligencer May 24 2007: C.1.

Byrne, David. “David Byrne's Survival Strategies for Emerging Artists — and Megastars.” WIRED Magazine 18 Dec. 2007. 20 Apr. 2008. http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/magazine/16-01/ff_byrne#

Byrne, David, and Thom Yorke. “David Byrne and Thom Yorke on the Real Value of Music.” WIRED Magazine 18 Dec. 2007. 20 Apr. 2008. <>

Lieberman, Marc, and Robert E. Hall. Macroeconomics: Principles and Applications, Fourth Ed. Mason, OH: Thomson Higher Education, 2008.