I always seem to find my way back to YouTube. Sometimes I realize just how much we take for granted something as amazing as YT - a virtually (and in all actuality, potentially) unlimited fountain of music (and new ideas, cultural blah blah blah, but we're talking about music here).
Honestly, it's a very nearly perfect medium for discovering music.
"But Evan, it's so full of ads. Don't you hate marketing with a passion?"
Well, yes. That is true. And I do. Very much. But I'm also a realist. (Shut up, I am.)
What people don't seem to realize is what a financial black hole YT is. Consider first the amount of memory it takes to store video files. Then consider the sheer volume of videos being uploaded onto YT. Also remember that membership (and thereby the video hosting) is free. The picture starts to come together.
A year ago, there were over 120 million videos on YT, with over 200,000 new videos being uploaded every single day. Their bandwidth alone cost $360M that year, with ads only bringing in $240M. Factor in all of the money they have to spend buying the rights to the music so widely uploaded, defending themselves in the lawsuits from the copyrights they'll inevitably be unable to secure, not to mention all the other expenses that a normal business has to worry about, and you start to understand. They lost somewhere in the neighborhood of $470M that year.
My point? Only that while ads suck, and the entire marketing business is an evil pirate ship populated by wretched, twisted souls feeding on the naivety of the innocent, YT has no choice if they want to stay afloat. In fact, they're going to have to do a whole lot more to actually make it. And honestly, I hope they do, because like I said, it's a very useful tool for finding new music.
Perhaps most importantly, it serves as a medium for artists to circumvent the giant foreboding castle on the hillside which is always mysteriously rainy that is the music "biz," and focus on their music instead of...business.
In that way, it's another avenue by which the people are unknowingly bringing about the inevitable doom of the record companies, along with home recording and indie labels, and not a moment too soon if you ask me.
And, because you've been so good and read this far, here's this.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Unexpected
I've been busy. Between crashing my car and trying to keep up with deadlines/get things done in spite of it, this was the first thing that dropped. Sorry about that. Even now, I don't have a lot of time, so I'll spare you the boring sob story.
Basically, this is just a brief expansion on my earlier point about mainstream music. I was talking about sifting through the field of feces that is the music industry these days and how in spite of the less-than-savory nature of the sifting, you could find some really great stuff. Almost like they flooded a whole field with their chunky, stinky bile and then scattered a small box of little shiny fun things all over the field. But this analogy is getting a little worn out. Moving on, then.
My point was that no matter how bad things get in "the biz," how corrupt and downright evil everyone in it seems to be, there is absolutely NO crushing the spirit of music. It is there, period, end of story. As such, it will always find ways to manifest itself - to shine through the murky poo water filling the field. (Leaving that analogy behind for real this time - I promise.)
My incontrovertible evidence:
In spite of its origins (a big, evil multinational corporation), this piece of music managed to take on a life of its own. A truly original idea came out and was perfectly executed, circumventing all of the BS that stops most original music before it can even see the light of day through the bars in its window.
Who woulda thunk it?
Basically, this is just a brief expansion on my earlier point about mainstream music. I was talking about sifting through the field of feces that is the music industry these days and how in spite of the less-than-savory nature of the sifting, you could find some really great stuff. Almost like they flooded a whole field with their chunky, stinky bile and then scattered a small box of little shiny fun things all over the field. But this analogy is getting a little worn out. Moving on, then.
My point was that no matter how bad things get in "the biz," how corrupt and downright evil everyone in it seems to be, there is absolutely NO crushing the spirit of music. It is there, period, end of story. As such, it will always find ways to manifest itself - to shine through the murky poo water filling the field. (Leaving that analogy behind for real this time - I promise.)
My incontrovertible evidence:
In spite of its origins (a big, evil multinational corporation), this piece of music managed to take on a life of its own. A truly original idea came out and was perfectly executed, circumventing all of the BS that stops most original music before it can even see the light of day through the bars in its window.
Who woulda thunk it?
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Surprising?
I know what you're thinking.
"Evan, musical cynic you, stop being such a negative Nancy and boring us with your endless ranting and complaining about the music industry! Some of the music being made today is really good."
And you'd be right.
I'm often mistaken for one of those people who insists that no good music was made after nineteen hundred and whatever year, arbitrarily picking out a specific time when everything worthwhile ceased to be, elitist snobs that they are. Believe it or not, there actually is a significant amount of music made recently that I like, some of it even mainstream. I can feel your shock and disbelief even now. But it's true.
First off, Richard Bona. If you know much of anything about my musical taste, you would know that he makes my pants tight for a lot of reasons, none of them homoerotic in any way. I could go on and on talking about why he's so amazing, but I've talked about him before, and there's little doubt that I'll find some reason to talk about him again, so I'll demonstrate my superhuman self-restraint by just dropping a video in here and calling it good.
"But what about someone the rest of us have, you know, HEARD OF?"
Fine, fine.
Well, immediately I think of Christina Aguilera. Yes, I said Christina Aguilera. She's one of the relatively few musicians who came out of the '90s:
A) Alive,
B) Still performing, and
C) Still worth listening to.
And really, she's gotten considerably better since the beginning of the new millenium, by my estimation. That's saying something, because I hadn't really thought much of her way back when, so it took some serious changing of my mind to get me to a place where I'd be saying this. But she's really, really good. Case and point: the video below.
With pop stars, I usually see a certain sort of unrestrained cliche in their music that mirrors whatever trend is "in" at the time among popular acts. But in this song particularly, I see and hear a subtle but definite restraint with a very specific purpose - the meaning of the song.
She could have performed it in other ways, made it more "flashy" and "pop starish," but instead she reserved her (formidable) talent as a singer and let the music as a whole speak for itself. The result is a very surprisingly powerful song. She had something she wanted to say with this song, and she said it - the honesty is unmistakable. It's real.
I'll put it this way - it gets me teary-eyed. There's very little in music that can do that, so I pay special attention when it does happen. Even if you don't think that her music is "your thing," I urge you to listen to this. It may very well change your mind.
I can also recommend exploring her other music without having to grit my teeth as I say it, making her even more of an oddity. She's put out her fair share of great albums; I personally really dug "Back to Basics" and "Stripped," both of which seem obvious to me as evidence of a teen pop star who, through some combination of fortune and sheer tenacity, managed to survive through the major obstacles of young success, and went on to take charge of her own career to whatever degree she was able and make exactly the music she wanted to make. Now, if that isn't worthy of some heavy praise in the artistic mire of the modern music industry, I don't know what is.
I really don't have a whole lot more to say about this. I could go on recommending modern stuff that I think is great, but that's not going to necessarily do you any good. So I'll offer what advice about it that I can. Basically, in spite of the wretched, twisted business that controls music today, there are still gems to be found. Not the pseudogems that "aren't bad to listen to," or are "impressive" because they write their own songs before they turn 18 - that doesn't matter one bit if the music ISN'T GOOD. Give everything a real chance to impress and surprise you, but be honest when what you hear is just another iteration of the same manufactured "musical" trend.
Ears, mind, and heart open, you will find good music.
"Evan, musical cynic you, stop being such a negative Nancy and boring us with your endless ranting and complaining about the music industry! Some of the music being made today is really good."
And you'd be right.
I'm often mistaken for one of those people who insists that no good music was made after nineteen hundred and whatever year, arbitrarily picking out a specific time when everything worthwhile ceased to be, elitist snobs that they are. Believe it or not, there actually is a significant amount of music made recently that I like, some of it even mainstream. I can feel your shock and disbelief even now. But it's true.
First off, Richard Bona. If you know much of anything about my musical taste, you would know that he makes my pants tight for a lot of reasons, none of them homoerotic in any way. I could go on and on talking about why he's so amazing, but I've talked about him before, and there's little doubt that I'll find some reason to talk about him again, so I'll demonstrate my superhuman self-restraint by just dropping a video in here and calling it good.
"But what about someone the rest of us have, you know, HEARD OF?"
Fine, fine.
Well, immediately I think of Christina Aguilera. Yes, I said Christina Aguilera. She's one of the relatively few musicians who came out of the '90s:
A) Alive,
B) Still performing, and
C) Still worth listening to.
And really, she's gotten considerably better since the beginning of the new millenium, by my estimation. That's saying something, because I hadn't really thought much of her way back when, so it took some serious changing of my mind to get me to a place where I'd be saying this. But she's really, really good. Case and point: the video below.
With pop stars, I usually see a certain sort of unrestrained cliche in their music that mirrors whatever trend is "in" at the time among popular acts. But in this song particularly, I see and hear a subtle but definite restraint with a very specific purpose - the meaning of the song.
She could have performed it in other ways, made it more "flashy" and "pop starish," but instead she reserved her (formidable) talent as a singer and let the music as a whole speak for itself. The result is a very surprisingly powerful song. She had something she wanted to say with this song, and she said it - the honesty is unmistakable. It's real.
I'll put it this way - it gets me teary-eyed. There's very little in music that can do that, so I pay special attention when it does happen. Even if you don't think that her music is "your thing," I urge you to listen to this. It may very well change your mind.
I can also recommend exploring her other music without having to grit my teeth as I say it, making her even more of an oddity. She's put out her fair share of great albums; I personally really dug "Back to Basics" and "Stripped," both of which seem obvious to me as evidence of a teen pop star who, through some combination of fortune and sheer tenacity, managed to survive through the major obstacles of young success, and went on to take charge of her own career to whatever degree she was able and make exactly the music she wanted to make. Now, if that isn't worthy of some heavy praise in the artistic mire of the modern music industry, I don't know what is.
I really don't have a whole lot more to say about this. I could go on recommending modern stuff that I think is great, but that's not going to necessarily do you any good. So I'll offer what advice about it that I can. Basically, in spite of the wretched, twisted business that controls music today, there are still gems to be found. Not the pseudogems that "aren't bad to listen to," or are "impressive" because they write their own songs before they turn 18 - that doesn't matter one bit if the music ISN'T GOOD. Give everything a real chance to impress and surprise you, but be honest when what you hear is just another iteration of the same manufactured "musical" trend.
Ears, mind, and heart open, you will find good music.
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