I'm Pissed Off
I work at Microsoft. Therefore, I feel entitled as an employee not to be a Kool-Aide Drinker (although I am required to be a Dog Food Eater), and therefore will allow myself to be, as an employee, the company's toughest critic. And therefore, until Microsoft produces something as good as an iPod,--scratch that, *better* than an iPod, I will happily buy it. But until then, the iPod is my device of choice and I just bought a new one a few days ago. It is tiny and it is gorgeous.
I am extremely pissed off at music and have been for about the last 12 years. I wrote an email to my friend Emily yesterday telling her how much I liked the potential of her employer's software. She works for iLike and it is a recommendation application that works off of iTunes and Microsoft Media player. I find it easier to use in iTunes which is my media player at home, although not set to default. I don't think iLike is as dazzling as it could be, but I am sure the smart people working there have tons of great ideas yet to come to fruition due to the two big high tech baddies: Resources and Budget.
The album is dead. I think that is fine. We can go back to singles. I look forward to the death of the record label. I also look forward to the death of hair extensions just like I looked forward to the death of bands with one-name monikers (aka Bush) just as I looked forward to the death of bands who were all named The Somethings (The Vines, The Libertines, The FuckAlls). I think that in this age of digital media the album will be replaced with the Happening. I think this is good for music lovers and I think this is good for musicians. I have been waiting for a really long time for the next big Change the World movement or band and I don't think it is ever coming. All we have now are trends. A trend is not a movement. A trend does not change the world, a trend is just a curve in the road. I think that the the Next Big Movement in music is actually happening now...we just won't be able to see it until we feel it. We should not mourn the fact that ticket sales have been down for years or that music sales have been down for years. This is simply indicative of two things: one, music kinda is horrible right now and two; no one has figured out how to actually make a profit yet from selling songs in a purely digital form.
The above diatribe is not why I am writing this entry. I am writing this entry because I wanted to highlight an excellent piece I read in the Seattle weekly newspaper called The Stranger. It is an essay on Britney Spears' new album with some commentary on her career. It is written by Stephen Elliott. This article is good music writing.
Examples of bad music writing can be witnessed in the lazy reviews of Mika's Live in Cartoon Motion. The amazon.com/.co.uk review is dated and dismissive in its pop culture references and the Rolling Stone review of this album is also phoned in by someone who clearly got his education in journalism reading the customer reviews posted on Amazon written by 13 year olds. Mika suxs! It is the worst kind of album review: merely a prediction as to whether or not other people will love it or find it annoying. This album has intrigued me since it came out for reasons I won't go into now. I knew it would be brushed off by music critics and the thing I love in this digital age is that you can read many reviews from many different publications thereby discovering how utterly lazy and lacking in imagination so many "professional" music crtitics can be. I have read four reviews of Mika's album and they all say exactly the same thing often using the exact same words, references, and comparisons. I do not think this is a reflection of the album. I think this is a reflection of the writers. Maybe they are intellectually exhausted or just as pissed off as I am. But mostly I just think they are bad. Finally, in my pursuit of new music, I looked up the article on Rolling Stone detailing their 50 best albums of the year...2-3 reviews per page. Way to go RS with your shitty UI. Also, as happens every time (and there haven't been that many times) that I have gone to rollingstone.com, my browser locks up. For shame.
I am going to conduct a year long experiment with my new iPod. I am not going to transfer any of my old music on it, no matter now much I might be craving a particular song from my library. I am only going to put new music on it (new to me, can still be artist catalog), and live songs/albums count. I am going to pay for everything unless it is offered free of charge, and I am going to try very much to only buy music that is a new release. We will see at the end of the year how many songs I have, how many songs I have from any given album, and how much I actually enjoy my collection without having to try too hard.
