Back in the 1990s, when the Chicago Bulls were a dynasty rather than a laughingstock, I remember overhearing a conversation at a diner between two twenty-something women. Apparently, one of them had bumped into Scottie Pippen at a restaurant and asked him for an autograph. As the guy was sucking down a plateful of pasta, he declined. "And you know what I said to him?" the lady telling the story said. "I said, 'I don't care about yo' autograph anyway. You'll never be Michael Jordan.'"
Welcome to Chicago, where Playa Hating is elevated to an artform that only crusty pimps and musical vagabonds just one week of radioplay away from being Bigger Than Kanye can appreciate.
Two years ago, I had this crazy idea to put together a tribute story to Armando, one of House Music's most influential figures, probably most famous internationally for his tracks "Land of Confusion", "151" and "100% of Disin' You". Armando was everywhere when I was first getting into electronic music. He was throwing parties on the Southside for a primarily black audience. He was playing at raves for a primarily white audience. He was throwing his own parties at the legendary Northside spot, Medusa's, for an audience that was a little bit of both. He was dumpster diving in back of Trax Records with Paul Johnson for irregular copies of "Move Your Body" to sell at high schools.
And then this phenomenal talent passed on, at just 26 years of age, and I really don't think Chicago ever really recovered. Following in the footsteps of the movers and shakers of the 1st Wave of Chicago House, many people from the 2nd Wave left town (prompted, of course, for many of the same reasons. And given the level of fame and success many have achieved, it's hard to fault them.)
The music scene became terribly segregated again (not that this had substantially changed, but it seemed that few were even trying anymore).
All of these things might have happened anyway, and who knows - Armando might be living in Amsterdam himself right now, playing to predominantly white-or-green-or-Martian audiences. But it seemed like that center was no longer there, holding things together. To blow the dust off the old cliché, you didn't even realize it was there until it was gone.
The response to the article was overwhelming. It was reprinted overseas by Faith Fanzine and to this day remains one of our most popular features.
But the really overwhelming part was the openness of the people I interviewed. I fully expected the sort of "He was a great guy, helped my career, great records" sort of resumé responses, and to be sure I got some of those.
Mike Dunn bared his soul to recount the last days. I have to tell you, Mike Dunn didn't know me from anyone at that point, but he opened up and trusted me to get it down exactly as he put it.
5 MAGAZINE: Were you around when Armando became sick?
PAUL: Yeah. I'm going to tell you about this. Nobody knows this but one person - DJ Emanuel.
Me and Armando were extremely close when he got sick. But I couldn't handle that. The whole time he was in the hospital - months - everyone was going to see him. He kept saying, "Where's Paul at? Tell Paul to come." I feel so sorry and ashamed, man, but I never went to see him. I couldn't see him. And I was already in a wheelchair myself. See what I'm saying?
I knew he was going to die. I couldn't look at his face because I knew. I knew it'd be the last time I'd see him. I didn't want to remember him that way. I wanted to remember him as the man I'd always known - smiling, laughing, cracking jokes with each other. And that's how I kept it. He was so close to me and trusted me that the 707 that he used to mix with? The reel-to-reels? He left those with me and those were his most prized possessions in the world. With nobody else. I felt pretty good about that, that he felt that good about our friendship, because everybody was his friend by this time.
I just feel bad because I didn't go see my friend. I couldn't see him that way. And I understand why half of my friends never come see me in hospitals. They never come. And I always say, "Why don't you guys come?" They never really give me a straight answer but I get it. I couldn't see him, either. So I finally get it. At his funeral I just sat there and cried, grabbing his arm. Nobody touched me and they let me stay up there. That was my boy...
In the end, with something like 15 hours of interviews, I decided to write myself out of the story entirely and just let Paul, Terry, Farley, Eric Martin, Kevin Starke and others talk. I was aware that I hadn't been able to get in touch with some people who were close to Armando, so I added that I would still be interested in talking to them, but this was something I wanted to get out while I had it and didn't want to delay it for years and years to cover every possible angle. It needed to get out. And I'm glad it did.
And because this is Chicago, and because this is the music industry, that's when the parasites, hangers-on and outright scum moved in.
One of the first comments I received about the story came via an anonymous, moronic email claiming the people we interviewed "didn't give a fuck about him[,] they want to steal from him", and we should talk to a local figure whose name I'm redacting now because I have no proof he was behind this goofy slander campaign, though I have my suspicions.
The tone was basically like this: "Everyone you interviewed is bullshit, you should really talk to Producer X (who hasn't released a record in like 5 years, and a hit record in about 15), and I'll be glad to set that up for you. He's really great and you should interview him anyway because he's a legend and all of these guys wouldn't be shit without him."
Several emails, probably all from the same source, followed, culminating in a threat to kick my ass. About a year later, we received a drunken voicemail - undoubtedly from the same source as it cites the same individuals - threatening to burn our office down.
All of this over someone who had passed on. Tacky? I'm not sure if grave robbing would be more disrespectful to the dead.
I'm bringing this up now as we just re-posted a classic mix in tribute to Armando, with Eric Martin's annual party featuring Paul Johnson, Eric Martin and DJ Urban scheduled for this coming Thursday. This February 12 would have been Armando's 40th birthday, and every year his friends and fans get together to remember this amazing man and his music.
Possibly, the usual suspects will crawl out of the discarded bag of Cheetos they live in to engage in the usual hatefest, which has never been about Armando and all about their own insecurities.
In their desire to have their picture on the front of a magazine, they'll literally crawl over departed friends and try to assassinate the reputation of a dozen people whose main crime is that they're more successful.
But that's Playa Hating for you, and no town excels in this quite like Sweet Home Chicago.
Doc Link is a cat that's been around Chicago for more than two decades. He just does what he does and woe unto you if you don't notice, because he makes beats that send the mega-hyped Agency DJs back to crate-diggin' in the ghetto flea markets. Probably his best known cut was a remix of Roy Davis Jr and Malik's "Back 2 Chicago" (officially, Infinity featuring Malik) - a release that has in about 7 years has become quite a rarity until it resurfaced again last year on Osunlade's installment in King Street's Mix the Vibe series.
According to horse's mouth, Doc teamed up with Eman to form Liberate Recordings in 2006, but was definitely a "for those who know label". In the last year, they've spread out their marketing tentacles in a manner inspired by some low-key genius. Myself and folks like me get samplers every so often, packed with upcoming releases and typically with names attached that will get a jaded son-of-a-bitch's attention. Their last sampler (reviewed here) featured remixes by Jon Cutler, Todd Terry and Demarkus Lewis. See? Your ears instantly perked up. Genius.
The latest installment of Liberate's not-for-sale series is another 4 track stomper, featuring company men Doc and Eman along side Alton Miller, DJ Romain, and past Liberate-collaborator Angel-A (not Alanis, but the vocalist from Detroit featured on 2009's "Escape").
Now there are some great sounds on here, but frankly I can't even listen to them because the Doc & Angel collab "Lifts Me Higher" makes the most beautiful ballad sound like angsty white noise. This is all sunshine and pecks on the cheek for the Barry White lateshift, strictly for the Deep and R&B crowd with hooks so finely polished that someone at a major publisher ought to write them a blank check for their services as songwriters. Only a few times have I heard a track and thought it was too good for the club, and this is one of those times.
(That might be a strange reaction, but if you've been subjected to what those pointy-haired trogs do to good songs with their unauthorized and frankly unasked-for progressive fidgety trance-o-matic edits, you know that my intention here is a good one. It's like a lover of the arts being subjected to a room with wall-to-wall black velvet paintings of The Elephant Man. It's just wrong and you sort of feel bad for the person with so little taste to own it but even worse for anyone forced to look.)
But here you go: a beautiful song that is well-written enough for even those emptying out their brains to commercial radio to listen to. And the slammin' Linkbeats in the intro are guaranteed to get anyone's attention. You can get a good idea of the songwriting craft, hook + beats smashed together in this tasty lil 50 second clip:
Preview
Judging how things went with the last Liberate sampler, this one will probably be out soon as a single with some extensive remix action.
Is there ever a bad time for Hammertime? If you're listening to the Rescue + Uriah West Remix of Chemars' Feelin' Good EP on Hub City, the answer is hell yes there fucking is. This is a perfectly good remix, pushing the original into grimey loft nirvana and with otherwise terrific vocal samples and a sparse but effective '90s suicide keyboard riff. I love 99% of this: it sounds like something Sneak could write when he was a little buzzed on a chill Sunday afternoon.
But that 1%, that bit that just screws the pooch - that 1% is a sample of MC Hammer's hook from "U Can't Touch This", something that the mind instinctively associates with gigantic silk pants and the rise of radio-friendly Hip-Hop that reigned until the Wu put a bag over its head and beat it with a bat. I could live about 900 years and never hear MC Hammer tell me what the fuck I can touch again and die a very satisfied man. Unfortunately, the remixers think differently and dropped this poison pill into what's seriously a really nice mix - over and over and over again.
(Parenthetically: I remember reading something a few years ago from someone appalled by the heavy sampling in electronic music who wondered what would happen when producers ran out of old hits to sample. This is the end result: a song based on sampling Rick James' "Superfreak", sampled again. Maybe someone will come along and sample this remix and we'll get so meta we'll amuse ourselves to death.)
Now you might think I'm being a dick. You might think that someone can look past this. And if it were a few times, I could probably go right on my merry way and make sweet love to the rest of this boogie track. I'd love it, because the track is just fine on its own and would have been my pick of the release. But I don't have a clue how Mahatma Gandhi can get all peaceful and tolerant and turn the other cheek to 50+ repeated samples of the hook from a song that no one can listen to anymore without taking hostages. The remixers seriously sound so delighted to have fished this bit of pop culture trash out of a multi-platnium piece of industry chum that they just can't help beating you over the head with it over and over. You might as well sample "Five eight eight, two three hundred, Empire! It'd have the same effect.
If you can overlook that much (and you should have gotten the point that it's pretty hard to overlook that much), this is still a solid three track release. The label should have wrapped crime scene tape around the rest of this to keep the remixers at bay because they really screwed a solid overall release. In the absence of my my my my music hits me so hard makes me scream oh my lawd, the original, Hammer-free mix of "Feelin' Good" will have to suffice, and its bumpin' bass and a slower tempo than your average Funky House track makes it easy on the ears. "Mustard Feet" rounds out the release and is a strong track in its own right, with a glitchy beat and a jazzy riff that works well against it.
Chemars, from Romania, has been pushing out a number of solid releases lately (5 reviewer Lydia puts his "Getcha Hustle On" in her crate "labeled 'just muthafukin' good'") and is definitely one to keep an eye on, with cuts on Lowercase Sounds, Dustpan (Singapore) and a few other labels. He's got serious chops and the kind of adventurousness that can devastate genres and blow open the narrow lil categories of music.
Reading and listening the triumphant but ultimately shallow posts about the "comeback of vinyl records" has turned my stomach in knots and now it's inside out. This is nothing to celebrate and if you read the very statistics you're posting with a critical eye, you'd file this one not under WOOT but WTF.
And if you stop there, that's fucking awesome. Go vinyl. The audiophiles, for once, are winning.
But you shouldn't stop there, because the same source (Soundscan - in fact, it's in the very same press release that generated all these positive stories) puts the total number of vinyl LPs sold at just 2.5 million records.
Two point five million. If you add up all of the vinyl sold in 2009, there were 2.5 million copies sold.
For the sake of comparison, what do 2.5 million records mean? How much money does it generate and signify?
I'm glad you asked.
There were considerably fewer vinyl records sold than the total number of albums (about 4.6 million) sold by Taylor Swift in the last year alone.
It's slightly less than the 2.7 million albums suave opera singer Andrea Bocelli sold in 2009.
It's slightly less than the 3.1 million records that reality TV creation Susan Boyle sold in 2009.
It's slightly more records than the 2.25 million CDs the remastered Beatles catalog sold in two weeks in September 2009.
It's slightly more than the 2.3 million Michael Jackson CDs sold in the 3 weeks after his death last June, but considerably less than the 8.3 million records from his catalog sold for the year.
In terms of the music industry (rather than an individual artist), 2.5 million copies is a rounding error. It's nothing. It's insignificant.
And those 2.5 million vinyl records are not from one artist, or one genre, or even one industry wanker-created category like "dance" or "pop". It's 2.5 million vinyl records total, covering everything from Front 242 to Danny Tenaglia to Michael Jackson and Prince and the Strawberry Fucking Alarm Clock put together.
In fact, the best selling vinyl recording artist of 2009 was Radiohead, with just under 48,000 LPs sold. Let's do this Nigerian email scammer style: fourty-eight thousand copies sold. That's not a Gold record, much less platnium. If the industry gave awards for sales so low, it'd be something like Cigarette Foil.
This is the 2nd straight year that Radiohead topped all vinyl album sales. That in itself is revealing of the market for these things. Radiohead is giving away digital copies of their music, and selling LPs basically to the diehard fan and collector markets. Prior to these "premium" vinyl releases being marketed by the band, most fans were probably unaware that vinyl editions of their favorite artist's music were even being pressed.
In fact, Amazon's 2nd bestselling rock vinyl record at this very moment is Radiohead's 2008 release In Rainbows - and In Rainbows sold all of 11,400 copies in 2009, according to the very same Soundscan press release that I've been quoting. That's the #2 bestseller at a major retailer, in a popular genre, by an insanely popular artist. (#1 is a reissue of Abbey Road. Good luck arguing that one.)
Vinyl is not becoming more popular: it's simply being marketed better to the very small minority willing to buy them. As I've mentioned before, I'd be thrilled if everyone pressed vinyl for everything because it sounds better than digital files, but self-delusion doesn't make a very good business model. If you're a vinyl lover, these numbers aren't worth cheering for. They're worth crying over.
In one of the more cryptic pre-launch announcements in recent months, the makers of Ableton Live and Serato Scratch Live have issued a press release, launched a website and are throwing a party to let the world know that they're doing... something.
Reading between the lines from the sparse (and extremely old) statement issued at ableton-serato.com, it appears that Ableton has vinyl-emulation envy and Serato has event-trigger envy. How to mix these two aspirations together - well, it's not hard to use your imagination to think up some potentially wonderful and some potentially disastrous mash-ups here.
Scouring my sources, it appears that the two companies will be launching a joint product this week (yes, that much was obvious). Seriously though, a hat-tip to corporate security because no one seems to be clear on the details or what this will mean for existing users of Serato and Ableton Live. Some interesting speculation at the excellent dv247 blog though.
We've written in the past about Peven Everett (or his collaborators, it's never entirely clear to me who is doing the typing) and his adventures and misadventures on the internet.
In this case, however, he has a point. Long story short: a promoter in the UK put something out for a neo-soul event "featuring the music of" about twenty of the biggest names in neo-soul, including one Peven Everett.
This is straight-out ghetto promoting and frankly you can't blame Peven (or his collaborators) for calling them out on it. Nobody books Frankie Knuckles "playing the music of" someone else. You use names like this when you're afraid your booked talent can't draw. Simple and easy.
The promoter (who appears to be this company) leaves a lulzworthy comment to the post, demanding Peven "remove this liable" (sic). Protip from your pal: it's usually not the best idea to sue people for things you can't pronounce, like libel.Here you go, Promoter Guy, let me Google that for you.
Unless you work for a hedge fund or a bookie, predictions for the coming year don't add up to squat. It's a useful way to fill copy, though, so as a relentless copywhore I'm going to list some of mine.
I've got to admit that these are an equal shot of glorious optimism and black pessimism, but it's all about the pith. You might be interested in reading Dave Clarke's for something thoughtful (though I'd say that his are just as much wishful thinking as mine).
The Death of Sushi House
Quite a bit of new House Music (broadly defined) is being made for home listening, not for the club. I don't really see this changing (nor should it: the best shot at broadening the fanbase is making music that exists outside of nosecandy happyhour), but the monotonous, so-tribal-we're-wearing-animal-skins trend for Deep House has run its course.
Snowflake Becomes Blizzard
We're gonna see more releases than ever by people you've never heard of, largely consisting of looped instrumental beats and cheap FX. Francis Ford Coppola once predicted that cheap high-quality consumer cameras would lead everyone to being a director. I see the same thing happening in music, with the difference that hacks with a Sony Digicam don't have the cheek to sell their youtube videos for $1.99 each.
The torrent of product in 2010 will lead to things we've been noticing for the last two years: the death of the hit record and a price approaching zero.
On the first count, there's so much nebulous product lacking distinction that it could be entirely possible for DJ sets and mixes to become utterly unique, without the possibility of duplication. I have no idea if this is good or bad or if it's advisable to tag it with one or the other.
On the second, it's very likely that a large number of producers who currently have a day job and are making fuck'all selling their music will just throw open their catalog for free. I don't mean for promotion, or an unreleased mix, or songs that they just wouldn't get around to releasing anyway. I mean everything they do will be released for free.
Really, if you're clocking $100 for a track and get some decent press but inching no closer to fame, what's the difference to you? The music probably won't be anything a DJ would consider a must-have (at least not in the beginning), but the market won't be able to absorb a large amount of product priced at $0.00 for long. Some are already doing this but I see free music becoming a genre almost unto itself.
More Crossover Production
Hip-Hop producers have been using House beats for awhile, but we'll see more cross-genre collaborations than ever before. I don't mean remixing pop songs or sampling but straight-up two-guys-or-gals-in-a-studio collaborations.
One Hit Wonders Will Still Have Delusions of Entitlement and Relevance
Welcome to Chicago, where you can't throw a rock without hitting someone that had a minor hit record in 1986. This item is on the verge of just becoming a polemical rant, but if you're a producer that hasen't released a record in 10 years, you're an Oldie. You're not in the music industry: you used to be in the music industry. And you're currently on the outside looking in over a fence that's so low that you could skip over it, if you had the desire.
That might sound harsh but I can't imagine that the guys from Strawberry Alarm Clock are under the delusion that they're "owed" the cover of Rolling Stone in 2010. Or Vanilla Ice.
Music is easier to make and release than ever before. There's no excuse for having a catalog covered in dust, not anymore. Many of the original Chicago artists with a record on Trax or DJ International spend more time looking to relive their past via bullshit press release than they do making music. It's bullshit when there are hundreds of people making great music but can't trade on their name with the naive and unknowing.
If you want to separate the industry from the oldies, here's what you do: ask for a copy of their latest track. If they can't immediately produce it, run. We have to deal with these legends-in-their-own-mind every.single.day. It's sad that people outside Chicago get seduced by the hype and, more often than not, suckered.
We publish a music magazine. Though the industry has changed quite a bit over the years, over the transom submissions are still the lifeblood of any music rag. You want to write about what's new, what's interesting, what's groundbreaking or just what's good to groove to.
Just about all music submissions these days are MP3s. Digital files were supposed to make things easier, yet I spent about 3 hours on Tuesday hunting down artist and label info for releases we've gotten in the last two weeks. Despite repeated complaints from DJs and reviewers, many labels still fail to embed ID3 information in their tracks.
Here we are in 2010, a decade into the MP3 revolution that replaced vinyl, CD and cassette tapes, and people still can't get this.
This is something that my 12 year old niece knows how to do, but apparently a great number of House Music labels do not. Since I'm the helpful sort, here's a breakdown of things that my 12 year old niece knows how to do (with an explanation of how to do them!)
Tagging Your MP3s ID3 tags are tiny little bits of information that allow iTunes or some other digital media player to display track information, such as the title, the artist, and even what the artwork looks like. It's pretty nifty, and it takes no time or technical knowledge (I know this because I add it to every single mix and every single radio show published by 5 Magazine, which is upwards of 100 sets of ID3 tags per year).
Why should you include them? Well, you've surely come across something that looks like this before:
Now if you're sending your music out, presumably you want people to play it. Presumably you want people making thousands of dollars for playing in front of thousands of people to play it. But do you have any idea how many tracks, say, Louie Vega gets in a day? a week? Hundreds. Do you really think he's going to waste his time hunting down the track information that you might have included in an email but not embedded in the track? (Many people make this mistake. People save tracks. They don't save emails. Or you shouldn't expect them to.) Maybe Louie's a really nice guy and he will, but why would you make it hard for him to play your music? Doesn't that defeat the entire point?
HOW TO DO IT: Just about every digital audio workstation (DAW) that can export tracks as MP3s allows you to embed detailed ID3 tags in the file. You can even do it in iTunes by clicking on any track, selecting "Get Info..." and typing it in:
This takes less than two minutes, even if you're typing with one finger.
Photos
The other day I remarked to someone that big-name House producers and DJs often submit tiny, thumbnail-sized headshots to major magazines and publications while my 12 year old niece has a Flickr account with thousands of high rez photos with her friends making kissy faces and peace signs in oversized sunglasses.
You might be one of those people that's just happy being a guy behind the console and doesn't care if people write about you (or, I guess, if your records sell). In that case, by all means, skip this one. But if you run a record label, you do some sort of marketing. If that sounds like you, you need:
High Resolution Photos. If the photo is so huge that it doesn't fit on your monitor, then it's high resolution.
Interesting Photos. The headphone shot might be cliched but hey, if you're a DJ, your options are limited. A shot of you looking dreamy in the midst of urban decay is cool but a headphone and peace sign shot is better than nothing.
Professional Photos. If the photos aren't professional, they should at least be clean and look pretty decent. More people are going to see these in print than you will probably ever meet. That photo, to many people, is what you look like. You should probably make it count.
HOW TO DO IT: You can set up a photoshoot with a qualified professional for less than 1 hour and not much more than $100. Granted, they're not going to hold your hand and dress you up like the Queen of England like it's for the cover of Vanity Fair, but the supply of photographers looking for clients far outstrips demand. You can get some really good work done for not much money.
YouTube
This is a long-standing pet peeve of mine. YouTube is the greatest jukebox in existence, capable of playing songs I don't own and just want to hear once or twice, as well as tracking down obscure mixes and building hype (or extending markets) for new tracks that aren't for sale yet. We have a little script that looks for YouTube videos of tracks we review and I'll add artist-produced videos that provide a "behind the scenes" peek at new releases (to see what I mean, check out Terry Hunter's channel here.)
If you think hearing music doesn't lead to sales, you must have never tried on a pair of shoes before buying them. There is so little risk to putting your music on YouTube that it's asinine to argue otherwise. The kind of loser that's going to rip the audio and try to play it at a gig is not, under any circumstances, ever going to buy anything. You're not losing anything - unless you don't put up one at all.
As a bonus - and this is what the hardheads in the industry don't get about this -- YouTube content is pumped out everywhere. It's embedded on sites like this one. It's embedded on last.fm and facebook and forums. It costs you the same whether one person views it on YouTube or if 1,000,000 view it on some Tasmanian or Sudanese blog. It's piped to every single corner of the internet for the same price: free.
HOW TO DO IT: Create an account on YouTube, which takes about 2 minutes and requires an email address. If you're really serious about this, you can join the YouTube partner's program and actually make a small bit of scratch from ads played every time your videos are played. Most importantly, you can direct viewers to where they can buy what they're listening to or your website where you can throw other swag or gig info at them.
(And please: don't truncate the video. As much as you might imagine your fanbase as living, breathing credit cards, they're not dumb and they're not going to bother with your 2:30 clip when they can hear the full song elsewhere. Music is an experience. Nobody who makes this stuff can tell me they believe otherwise.)
iLike/iMeem/LaLa/last.fm
It's become blindingly obvious (and I'll have more to say on this another time) that the business model for dance music is dead. Dead. Radio won't fix it. Shutting down The Pirate Bay or Rapidshare won't do it. Marketing music exclusively at DJs - a small segment of any artist's fanbase - no longer makes sense. More to the point, though, there's no reason why you should be ignoring 90% of your fanbase who love your music, adore your sets and pay money to see you strut your stuff. Blasting your music to all of them costs the same: free.
There are dozens of streaming sites. None of them make any money but all of them have a tremendously large music base. I recently interviewed Mark de Clive-Lowe who not only participates on these sites but also shoots short videos of his work in the studio and even streams it when he's on the road. Hell, here's an old post in which we embedded a stream that DJ Spinna and DJ Jazzy Jeff broadcast live from a gig in Paris. (Requirements: a laptop with a webcam and internet connection.) Lars Behrenroth goes through his promos on ustream. You might not want to lifecast every moment of your life and contribute to the reality TV culture that's just eating America's soul at this point, but we're not really talking about that here. Just turn it off when you've got to go to the can.
HOW TO DO IT: Each of these sites have their own sign-up policies. For ustream, livestream and other streaming video sites, sign-up is free though there are some minor restrictions for unpaid members (max viewer limitations for livestream, though this really doesn't matter as you're starting out).
Imported beer tastes better. Microbrews, as a rule, taste better. Yet Budweiser and Miller sell billions of bottles a year and it's not because they brainwash us by carpet-bombing advertising all over the place, but because millions and millions of people (yeah, I know!) like them.
The argument of hi-fi vs. lo-fi has been around for at least 25 years - really since CDs began replacing vinyl as the packaging of choice among consumers. And actually, there isn't an argument at all: hi-fi is better. Many DJs I've spoken to feel almost as if they've been railroaded into a vinyl-less world, and it's true - if you want to stay up on music these days, you're going to have to deal with MP3s even if you think they are (and they are!) clearly inferior.
Now we're starting to see a new phenomenon. People brought up listening to MP3s, whose primary stereo is an iPod and computer, actually prefer the sound of lo-fi over hi-fi... when they can even tell the difference. From PC World:
The Professor found over time the preference was for MP3 encoded songs, with those listening failing to establish any loss in audio quality normally associated with compressed digital music.
"I found not only that MP3s were not thought of as low quality, but over time there was a rise in preference for MP3s," said the Professor who suggests the digitising process leaves music with a 'sizzle' or a metallic sound.
As with a previous generation's debate over the pros and cons of vinyl and CD, the study suggests young ears at least prefer the tinnier and flatter sound of some digital music over CDs and vinyl.
This of course goes hand-in-hand with the fact that more music is being produced to sound better through crappy speakers - to say nothing of the proliferation of Auto-tune which makes just about everything on radio sound like a Sprite commercial with rockin' guitars and multicultural yet inoffensive beautiful people partying on the beach.
Two days ago, Apple purchased popular music streaming sight LaLa (it's a rule these days that any technology that aims to be popular must have a name close to the sound a baby makes throwing up on itself). Socialmediatards fell into a frenzy that this meant that Apple was going to launch a free streaming version of iTunes. Now there are indications that this isn't even close to the truth. Apple is a notoriously secretive company, but it appears they purchased LaLa for the right to employ a couple of their engineers. They've done this many times before, either to secure access to a certain component or simply to expand their devious little hive mind for a product launching way, way down the road.
Lala was only the latest music streaming company to get swallowed up by a gigantic corporation. Back in August, MySpace (owned by Rupert Murdoch, not "Tom") purchased iLike. And just yesterday, MySpace consummated its black widow ingestion of iMeem.
These were more or less the cream of the crop as far as music streaming sites went. Pandora, Spotify and a few others are still out there, but as they say in the newspaper business: two incidents is a coincidence, three makes a trend. And the trend here should freak everyone the fuck out.
Do you know what Apple paid for LaLa? Rumor has it, about $17 million dollars. Sounds like a lot of money until you realize that LaLa had about $14 million in cash in the bank, which makes the actual price around $3 million.
That's all that's left from the estimated $35 million Lala received from investors (including Warner Music). And that gives LaLa a return on investment of -50%, which makes the real estate industry look damn lucrative right about now.
Back in August, iLike was sold to MySpace for $20 million. And iMeem - probably the most popular of all streaming sites - was picked up for somewhere around $1 million.
These sites have millions of users between them. Why are these services going so cheap?
Because they're losing money, and a lot of it.
LaLa was in the red about half a million bucks a month, meaning they could float for maybe a little more than a year before going broke. iMeem nearly went out of business over the summer because it was (and presumably still is) drastically far behind on its payments to music industry labels for licensing their fees. The price here might very well just be a deal to cover iMeem's outstanding debt.
This is another dirty little secret of the "Music 2.0" that web gurus at conferences and workshops and seminars like to shove down your throat. Nobody is making money at it. Streaming is all great but it's just another promotional tool, not a goldmine. And there are quite enough promotional tools already that don't make any money.
The reason why nobody talks about this - or rarely does, anyway - is that most of the writing about these companies is from tech-oriented sites and publications. They're writing from the perspective of users, not musicians (and certainly not as investors). They love a service and declare it a success - and it is, as far as pleasing many people goes.
Walking around and stuffing envelopes full of money into the hands of strangers is successful as well, but, like music streaming sites, is not really a growth industry.
This profound disconnection between users on the one hand and content producers and investors on the other has led to some surreal episodes in the wake of the new ownership of these sites taking over. There was a bit of an uproar when the first thing MySpace did after taking over iMeem today was to shut off access to iMeem's API, which developers can use to spray a site's content around like a firehose.
Developers immediately freaked the fuck out - many had built websites around those APIs (presumably with as solid a business plan as iMeem had in the first place, which is to say none at all.)
Lee Martin, developer of twt.fm (a "mash up" of iMeem and Twitter, presumably pronounced TWATFOOM!) cried foul as his service built upon iMeem's API went dark:
If this is MySpace's idea of how to run a successful music tech company, they have truly lost their way. Imeem was leagues ahead of their competition (MySpace, iLike, and Lala) in terms of technology and openness. They represented the music business of the future. Now they are a forced hyperlink to a cold, un-innovative, MySpace landing page (http://myspace.com/imeem) making false promises and giving no guidance or help for the developer community they just destroyed.
In truth, Rupert Murdoch is sick of MySpace losing money. Every day, every user is costing iMeem money. Rupert's hand-picked minions at MySpace undoubtedly read the writing on the wall and put a stop to bleeding bales of money for neat little hacks that nearly led iMeem to shut down before Rupert picked up the company for a song.
Martin is right, though: iMeem truly was the music business of the future. No future.
Traxsource has published their list of the top 100 and except for screaming at each other over the order, it's... pretty much about right. Granted, this is what you'd expect from a sales list (which not even the Grammies, the ultimate beauty contest for industry pinheads, is about), and I'm guessing that's what this is because there's no explanation whatsoever attached to it.
(Perhaps an issue to discuss at another time is how it came to be that two of the largest commercial vendors of dance music on the 'net (Beatportal and to a lesser extent Traxsource itself) came to also dabble in journalism, which to my mind no healthy industry has tolerated at any time in history.)
But! The top ten:
01: Mr.V - Tales From The Deepside 2 - SOLE Channel
02: Mishal Moore - Oh Lord (Incl. Kenny Dope + MuthaFunkaz Mixes) - Ill Friction
03: Blackcoffee feat. Bucie - Turn Me On (Incl. Raw Artistic Soul Mixes) - Gogo
04: Kerri Chandler - Track 1 Revisited - Max Trax
05: John 'Julius' Knight + Roland Clark - This Is House (Incl. Jask, Luis Radio + Raffa Mixes) - Soulfuric Trax
06: Various - MN2S WMC Miami Sampler 09 - MN2S
07: Mr. V - Strictly Rhythms Vol. 2 Sampler (Compiled by Mr V) - Strictly Rhythm
08: Yass Presents Jay + Tahira - All I'm Asking For - Grei Matter
09: Dennis Ferrer - Sinfonia Della Notte - Strictly Rhythm
10: Soulsearcher - Can't Get Enough (Incl. Henrik B, Hy2rogen + Nikola Remix, Guy Robin, Layabouts, Original Jazz-N-Groove Mixes) - Defected
series.
Is there ever a bad time for 
Ripping off Daft Punk's imagery?
Originality?
