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The "death" of the music industry

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Akima:

--- Quote from: imagist42 on 22 Feb 2011, 20:26 ---Honestly I think that's just the result of the monetization of anything. The minute you put a price on something, people are going to think of it in terms of its value relative to whatever good or service they provide others in order to make money, and the amount of money it takes to purchase other things.
--- End quote ---
Yes. Or to put it another way, if you don't want to be judged by commercial criteria, don't enter the marketplace. If you ask for money, expect to give value for it as judged by your customers.


--- Quote from: David_Dovey on 22 Feb 2011, 21:14 ---I think the reason Johnny C chose to use Joan of Arc in his example of things being misconstrued as "filler" is because Joan of Arc are a notoriously difficult band.
--- End quote ---
Personally, if I find a piece of music "difficult", I'm less likely to think it filler, not more. "Filler" doesn't mean "music I don't like immediately" to me. I fully accept that some music takes time, and multiple listenings, to absorb, but music that doesn't make you want to spend that time the first time you hear it, is probably bad. Why would you want to buy music that didn't engage your interest at all? Because Pitchfork said it was good?

So many of our ideas about the way music is packaged, and how much music "should" be in an album, are simply artefacts of obsolete music-distribution technology. An album is still, pretty much, the amount of music that would fit on two sides of an LP, regardless of how little music might be bought in that format now. If, as some of the postings here suggest, an album groups songs in a way that has artistic value independent of mechanical constraints and marketing convenience, there's really no reason why it should be any particular length.

David_Dovey:
This is such a weird conversation we're having, what with how, as far as the population of this board is concerned the "average" music "consumer" is pretty much a purely theoretical construct.

I could be wrong though. Is there anybody here that actually does "consume" music in the way this thread has described?

KharBevNor:
I'm just wondering what's so vital and essential about the album, which after all is something that's only been around for a bit over half a century. There was music before that and they'll be music afterwards. There'll still probably be albums. But albums aren't 'the right way' to dsitribute or organise music. They're just one particular artistic solution; and the artist has to simply adapt to the fact that their work may not be consumed in the way they wish. This isn't exactly new. I have several CD's with petulant attempts to make it impossible or annoying to play the CD on 'random' (tracks that begin at the end of previous tracks, 40 seperate minute-long blank tracks after the actual music, etc.) But I'm afraid, the idea that one's art is some inviolably pure thing that must be experienced in a certain order, a certain way, given a certain amount of attention, thought of in such a way, etc. and not experienced in any other way is unconscionable arrogance. We can create (what we) consider to be the optimal conditions for understanding, and try and guide people towards them. Some people will engage with them, others won't. Art (in any format) is a bit like a toy for grown-ups, and evryone knows there's no wrong way to play with a toy. To some people (ie. Johnny, Tommy I imagine, a few others here) the album format and its integrity are incredibly important, but to others they mean less, or nothing. And none of these opinions is any more valid than the other.

I do find it interesting that, other the last decade, a love for 'new independent music' (a certain form of new independent music anyway) is becoming more and more associated with a conservative attitude to artistic and distribution practice.

Johnny C:
i'm not exactly trying to defend the integrity of the Album-as-Form, and if that's how i'm being read i've probably shot myself in the foot with my initial comment up the page. what i'm trying to question is i guess what i always wind up questioning which is where and how we place value in art, and the reason we choose the site of value and the methods, and the semiotic & rhetorical structures that generate those things, especially those structures that have arisen in the last decade. i'm not really interested in talking about "paradigm shifts" and "the artist must adapt" because as a listener i find i'm not really interested, ultimately, in those things – i'm more interested in the actual stuff itself, and the way that's affected by those shifts and adaptations. just so we're clear.

Johnny C:
(and because those other things being talked about inevitably strike me as seriously egotistical, again, on the part of the listener – an attitude that boils down to "well i've already changed and i'm not willing to think about and talk it over so meet me over on this spot and then i'm going to run away again" which like to me doesn't strike me as particularly discursive or engaged but rather as kind of petulant and demanding and unreasonably fickle for 21st-century adults)

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