Wallpaper is nice.

It blends in.  It doesn't offend.  It conceals blemishes, the uneven surfaces and the holes.

It's easy on the eyes.

It's easy on the ears.

I don't want wallpaper.

I want to know that it wasn't perfect, that it was made by a person.  I want to believe that it is real.  I don't want it veiled and pleasantly unaware; it has to be stark naked and rosy-cheeked.

----

Here's an example.

So this is a bit tacky.

When it comes to music, I try to fight off nostalgia like the plague.  If you let it win you'll never listen to anything new.  We all gravitate toward the music of our past, the stuff we heard when we were growing into our adult limbs and brains.  And right now, for a moment, I'm going to let gravity win...

Today marks the 10th anniversary of one such item in my collection: "Tell All Your Friends", the debut album by Taking Back Sunday.  In 2002, this band was just another run-of-the-mill rock/pop crossover from Long Island, NY.  A dime a dozen.  Fodder for MTV marketing, and perhaps even designed make angst-ridden teenagers spend their allowance.  What music isn't?  Many of their peers have since disbanded or become irrelevant.  TBS has managed to last for 10 years, touring relentlessly and releasing four studio albums in that time.

And their music is still relevant.  Their sound has been polished and modernized over the years, but it has yet to become dated, self-referencial, or lazy.  Every new release has protected the energy and freshness of "Tell All Your Friends".  Sure, some releases have been more successful than others and not every song is brilliant.  But TBS continues to inspire rock music in a way that I believe not many other bands from that era are doing today.  And I think that's pretty cool.

Cheers guys.  There, I told all my friends.

Spotify -- "Tell All Your Friends" by Taking Back Sunday

Record/Record

Ok, this is a minor grievance, but can we all collectively decide on a definition for 'record' (i.e. "reh-kerd")?

Some listeners, creators, writers refer to a singular 'record'.  One song, which may or may not exist on an album.  Others use the term to define an album.  So who is right?

I venture to guess this confusion is tied to the history of a recorded medium--the vinyl 'record' --on which singles but also entire albums were distributed.

"You hear the new Skynyrd?"

"Yeah, that's a great record!"

One fan may refer to an LP, the other to a single.  Both correct, but neither is clear.  Whether they understood each other is another question entirely.  For what it's worth, the Recording Academy have since 1958 awarded 'record of the year' to a single.  A song, that when recorded achieved some level of excellence by their standards.

I might be contradicting myself here, but...

What happened to the days when we had patience?

Music used to be something in which we invested ourselves--monetarily, emotionally, physically. I remember pulling 'Tragic Kingdom' off the shelf and hoping the rest of the songs didn't suck. I had heard the single, "Spiderwebs". I had to have the CD, if only to play that one song on repeat. I ended up falling in love with the album. But only because I put work into it. Not every song spoke to me immediately, but I didn't get lazy and stick to what I knew.

This experience wasn't unique to that album, to that artist -- this experience wasn't unique to me. This used to be how we listened to music. Today we don't give any song--or album, or person--longer than 15 seconds to win us over.

Perhaps we could listen a little more like we used to.

It's simple.

Music is meant to move the listener.

Listening to a piece of music, or a song, is not like breathing. It engages the mind; it is a conscious activity. If you--the listener--'stop' the music while it is playing, and your state of being either improves or remains the same as it was while the music was playing, you have no business listening to that music. Move on. Find music that will move you.

It's simple.

Wow, it's been a while. And wow, it's been a while!

So, this blog thing never happened I guess. Or, it did for a while and then it didn't. I started it in 2008 because I felt like I had things to say about music and about the music industry... I needed a place to put them. And blogs were in.

Now it's twitter. And facebook. It's always been facebook, I guess. Wow, it's 2011 now. I joined facebook in 2003, when there were but a handful of Boston schools in its roster. At that time there were no 'status updates'. No 'news feed'. Was there a 'wall'? I can't remember. There were profiles. And the most important details were your college major and your relationship status. Thefacebook, we called it.

A few big things happened in my head today.

Radiohead put their new album out. It's called "King of Limbs" and it was released one day before its official release date (which is tomorrow). I've never been entirely into Radiohead music, but it's one of those bands that you just have to follow if you're into creating art. They're just so damn artistic it's almost depressing. They are brilliant.

I stumbled upon some statistics, regarding the so-called or proverbial 'death' of the music industry. There were a couple of articles depicting the rise and fall of different mediums over the past 3-4 decades. First it was the LP, and the 8-track, and then cassette tapes, CDs and finally digital downloads. It's staggering how successful the CD was as a medium. Truly remarkable.

We're settled firmly in the digital era now. A second graph showed the rise and fall of album sales over a similar span of time. The year 2000 (when CD was still king) was right around the apex. It's all about the single now, forget the album. You hear a song in a show or a stupid YouTube clip. You download it. Your iTunes library is a verifiable mess of singles, some of which you wonder how you'd ever come across...

I don't know what came over me, why I decided to write in this blog today. I suppose I was inspired by something a friend said, and by the Lefsetz Letter -- another blog which I have been reading a lot lately.

In any case, what ultimately spurred the decision to write was the latest blog post I had written. From September 2008. All of what happened today, I had basically observed and written about in my post two and a half years ago. Sure, it's not a great length of time. But in the music industry two and a half years is an eternity. Things change so quickly! And I'm not going to pretend I'm a prophet. Many people were making the same observations back then.

But seriously. We're all freaking out, because music sales are down. The way to make money from music has been clear for ages. But bands and labels are still being bought, sold, traded, and A&R people are still fucking up art and making lives miserable day after day to try and sell music as a commodity in itself. We are over it. The CD was the last vestige of music as something one physically owned. When Napster came it changed our perception about the value of music. We just don't want to deal with the responsibility of collecting anymore. We want to be mobile and fluid. We want an easy way to listen to whatever we want, whenever we want it.

Licensing is now and forever. The cloud is the future.

Spotify seems to be the buzz word when it comes to streaming music services. They just inked a deal with EMI, which leaves only 2 more big labels to hop on board before Spotify becomes fully operational in the US. Sony is already signed and sealed. This is the way to save the music industry as we know it. The labels are making virtually no money from music sales. Licensing their artists' music to a subscription service like Spotify would guarantee income from music listeners.

People still love music and will continue to listen to it. In 2008, I used to think that peer-to-peer sharing was the future. And it kind of was. I mean, it's clear now that more music is being 'stolen' or 'shared' than bought. But still, when you download music, it becomes a physical asset that you as a listener are responsible for. You have to keep it in your computer. Or on your iPhone. We're lazy these days, because we can be. Pandora is a much more appealing way to access music.

Now, give me Pandora without ads and with complete control over music selection and we have a deal!

Apple is rumored to be amping up its MobileMe service to include a feature that would allow users to put their collection of music, pictures, perhaps even video in 'the cloud' to be accessed anywhere. But that would require so much work on the part of the consumer! I don't want to have to manage everything. And I don't want to be limited to the property that I 'own'. I want my music service to be similar to that of Netflix 'Watch Instantly'. I hear about a new song while on Facebook at work. So I type it in, and there it is in high quality streaming format. Instantly. No syncing, no hassle.

The wonderful and terrible thing about Apple is its influence on everybody and everything. In personal technology, what Apple says goes. If Apple decides that we are going to continue to 'own' our music, then that is exactly what will happen. We will happily adopt their version of the cloud, and we will continue to 'steal' or 'share' our music ad infinitum...

And the music industry will continue to disintegrate until it is no more. Yes, artists make art. And money-makers make money. But an artist has to make money to survive. And music does not sell itself anymore. Ads do. Videos do. Radio always has. Streaming is the answer. And if money-makers want to keep doing what they do, they'll get smart right quick.

JT Woodruff made me do it.

I'm all for full albums and artwork, but at the end of the day it's about the music and the physical form began to die with Napster. No matter what labels or artists want, digital media is so much a part of the society now; it's easier to distribute and handle. It's permanent and it's infinitely replicable. Nevertheless, the father of MP3 will be around for a while, and I do agree that in most cases a disc for $10 is a good price.

When it comes to licensing music for video games and commercials, this is a double-edged sword. How many of you have listened to a band because you were introduced to that band by Tony Hawk's Pro Skater or Rock Band, an Apple commercial or YouTube. I know I'm not alone here. Goldfinger, Primus, Less Than Jake, and others would have never had such a formidable existence in my musical upbringing without this brilliant use of product placement. Sure, it decreases the "music for music's sake" value, but that's a latent force. Businesses using music to more effectively sell their products are like new quasi-record labels. A taste of the art, none of the baggage. You see the commercial, you play the game, you buy the music.

In this digital age, the biggest problem is the legal distribution model. Why do we download albums for free on P2P sites? Well, because they're free of course. But also because it takes less than a minute to download an entire album and these file sharing sites deliver top-notch quality, reward us for sharing, and best of all--we can have it a couple weeks or months before anyone else. The minute someone (read: industry at large) jumps on this, legalizes it, and charges a reasonable subscription fee is the minute I sign on.

To make a legal (paid) P2P service even more rewarding for its members--it'll have to be to survive--uploading/seeding bonuses could be given some redeemable value, so users can continue to feel like empowered members of a community. It would help, of course, if all other (free) alternatives dropped out of existence at the same time, but at some point the listener has to make a choice to go 'legit' and re-establish his or her own understanding of art's value. Until then, the free service is superior and will remain so ad infinitum.

Labels are scared right now. It's sad, but they're scared of us. The digital era has robbed them of their control. This is why they are recklessly signing half-baked and copy-cat acts. Change the distribution model, establish proper revenue streams for bands that deserve it, and broken will be easily fixed. Anyone catch the irony in that homage?