> "But where I'm at now, in my mind," Flegel said, "you just need some regulars. Some people who've got your back, are into what you're doing."<p>This reminds me of "1,000 true fans" [0]. A concept I've always liked and been drawn to. The internet has made that more possible than ever with things like Patreon. There are a couple podcasts in way behind on that I still pay for simply because I like the hosts and want to support them, I'd love to see more of that.<p>[0] <a href="https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/" rel="nofollow">https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/</a>
It’s a bit different, but Indian extreme metal label Transcending Obscurity has had several bands release two days early on bandcamp (I know for sure about Vorga [0] and Replicant [1]), and indie black metal band Adon [2] simply decided to stay bandcamp exclusive for a week before releasing on streaming platforms.<p>I very much appreciate those :)<p>There are, usually big-ish and famous-ish, bands who do the opposite, only release on streaming, leaving me no way to buy the album, also those only releasing on something like Amazon (which then requires me to get the disk to rip it myself, raising the buy-rating for me from 3.5 to 4/5), and of course also Japanese artists who often don’t seem to care about western audiences at all with their music only available on Japanese sites.<p>[0]: <a href="https://vorgaband.bandcamp.com/album/beyond-the-palest-star" rel="nofollow">https://vorgaband.bandcamp.com/album/beyond-the-palest-star</a><p>[1]: <a href="https://replicantband.bandcamp.com/album/infinite-mortality" rel="nofollow">https://replicantband.bandcamp.com/album/infinite-mortality</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://adonmetal.bandcamp.com/album/adon" rel="nofollow">https://adonmetal.bandcamp.com/album/adon</a>
I like Prince, have since I was a kid, but I'm not a "Fan" of Prince... I like his music. The problem is that Pop musicians grow and cultivate fans maybe, kids and people that will buy and collect anything an artist sells... Problem is that those Pop fans quickly grow out of it as they get older and often find there's no benefit in collecting things from a fallible character persona. They the artist either retires and fades away (until their unfortunate demise is reported on the news), or keeps going on tour until some embarrassing things begin to happen, like stage tumbles and mental breakdowns.<p>As a musician myself, I don't want fans, I just want a vast audience to hear my music so that a percentage of people out of it connect with it and collect it. No merchandising involved beyond the music, and streaming it is free... Social media dictates that all musicians need fans to grow, and that is toxic towards good authentic music happening. Major labels manufacture artists, and assemble teams of people that take actors and turn them into musicians, then the marketing machine makes up entire stories, and even lies about these musicians that can't hold up when the budget runs out. If you recall Milli Vanilli, that's just one instance of manufactured artistry. Now with Ai, it's just Milli Vanilli without collateral damage and artists to pay, the good thing though is the whole charade only works for Pop music, and it may entertain fans for short periods of time, as seen with pretty much all the BackStreet Boys, No comebacks Alright!<p>I'm glad I don't make Pop music, and I'm working to make timeless music, the POP life is not for me.
Did anyone pick up vibes here of Pattern Recognition from William Gibson?<p>The use of old web1 web sites, small quirky art pieces being left on back corners of internet to only be appreciated by small group 'in the know', the 1000 true fans.
The music itself sounds more like the past than the future of music and I guess indie is just not my cup of tea, but as a fan of some other obscure bands and styles, I can relate. Even then I do not think it is the future of music distribution, more like marketing gimmick. I am a software developer and I still dread the idea of making downloaded files available on my iPhone. If it is not on Spotify it may just as well not exist.
Something about this just really struck a nerve with me this Sunday morning. The music itself, which is phenomenal but also opening this GeoCities site. What a beautiful little gem today :)
I've loved Pat's music for 15 years now. There's an obsessive passion in the people who are into him, trawling for bootlegs and demos on soulseek, binge watching old Women live shows on YT. my friends excitedly recount the email conversations they've had with him, and hell yeah, wavs up for free e-transfer him if you can.<p>Regardless of whether you like the music, I think the larger object of his art and our reaction to it is terrific and I wish more people could create, discover, and relate to art this way.
In the pre-streaming era, Radio Heads In Rainbow is one of the best albums and it was distributed as a pay what you want.<p>It’s a cut the middle man move, it may be more trouble than it’s worth because the distribution channel is a pain to setup
I see this shift as a tech hype wave finally having its bubble burst under how shit a deal it is for everyone but the middlemen. Then again, I guess a lot of people actually like streaming services for music? This is alien to me. I just straight up never got into streaming music services. I've never had or wanted a spotify account. I think my use of automated discovery tools consisted of trying last.fm recommendations for a while. For the most part I like discovering music by word of mouth or bands touring together or through random happenstance. When listening to music on purpose I prefer to curate it myself from what I have in my collection (Which is mostly digital and I manage it through a filesystem. Most cloud file storage has a garbage featureset compared to like vanilla POSIX, let alone everything we've invented for file management on computers since). Sometimes, if I don't have something, I'll go try to find it specifically on Bandcamp or Youtube, but especially on the former I'm likely to buy it if I ever want it twice, and this is only untrue for the latter because stuff on youtube doesn't usually have a clear way to give the artist money, making it often easier to pirate than buy. I suppose I could still buy and rip CDs, but my last remaining optical drive is over a decade old and it's kind of inconvenient to do that<p>I'm not trying to be elitist or anything here. It genuinely baffles me that so many people prefer to just have a random stream of music play at them based on what some recommender system thinks they won't turn off, interspersed with ads or for a monthly subscription service that may average out to slightly less than I spend on music (but I'm pretty novelty-seeking and really like supporting artists when I can, so I think I'm above-average in how much new music I will buy). That's not even considering how bad it is for the artists, how it's yet another piece of a surveillance web, etc. I know people mostly ignore that stuff, and that there's a lot of industry dollars going into making it easier to ignore. But the baseline use case just seems obnoxious rather than pleasant or useful. I don't know how to reconcile the fact that my preferences seem really far outside the norm without explicitly trying to be contrarian about it. What do people like about this stuff?
Today's a great day - what a delightful 2000's throwback on all fronts. I wonder if there's any connection between this article and the rumored Pitchfork -> GQ reorg.
I got caught up in this hype when this album hit number one of the year so far on rateyourmusic (think of it as letterboxd but for music).<p>So I downloaded it, converted it to a format I could add to Music.app and play on my iPhone (for this reason alone it's not the future of music), listened to it, was distinctly unimpressed, so deleted it. It sounded too derivative.<p>Since I've heard new music by other artists that did a lot more for me.
In the future if artists can get their way, they would release this as an exclusive for 2 weeks on a site then release it on streaming. 1. People would pay to listen to it first. 2. People will still use stream to listen subsequently as it is easier.<p>Negative side is that streaming service may not like it, and people will spin it as a rip off even if it technically isn’t.
> I like Diamond Jubilee and am happy to pay for music, but downloading files and loading them onto my iPhone feels archaic and time-consuming.<p>Itunes will do that to you. Everybody else had their phone show up like a USB drive and just one drag/drop operation later were on their way.
"Diamond Jubilee" album is currently ranked as "#1 for 2024" on RateYourMusic:<p><a href="https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/cindy-lee/diamond-jubilee/" rel="nofollow">https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/cindy-lee/diamond-ju...</a>
Ariel Pink’s <i>The Doldrums</i> — another anthology of anachronistic nostalgia pop down sampled to AM radio quality — was released nearly 24 years ago. It is surprising to not see his work mentioned but maybe I’m not looking hard enough, or his cancellation has been too thorough?
Jack Conte was very spot on in his SXSW talk this year
<a href="https://youtu.be/5zUndMfMInc?si=2SqvZIyYi7QLKqmV" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/5zUndMfMInc?si=2SqvZIyYi7QLKqmV</a>
It’s interesting music. Two tracks through, I’m not exactly sure how/what to think about it, but I’ll keep listening for now. Maybe Beck meets Lord Huron meets Bill Callahan?
These comments are embarrassing. It’s a landmark album and being recognized as such by critics and us lifelong hardcore music fans. You see it’s not for any of you, or rather very few. It’s a sort of love letter to me and my ilk, aka those of us that started collecting records when we were teens and went on to own indie record stores in the 80/90s and early 2000 before most of them were shuttered. There are hints of Spacemen 3, Velvet Underground, hell even some more obscure nods to forgotten bands like Boo Radley, Crime and The City Solution and many many more. If you are not steeped in musical experience this record will not land with you. But for me and about 6 of my oldest collector friends (all in our 50s now) this is a towering achievement by a single person that wrote nearly every note on the record. On top of all that there is the utterly brilliant GeoCities website with its decidedly Twin Peaks vibe and oh so much fun to blade runner zoom around. Brilliance like this shines only a few times in life and us ex NeptureRecords and Play It Again forgotten staff and friends of those great record stores are having the time of our lives listening to the entries 2+ hours daily.
You think this is the future of music?<p><a href="https://youtu.be/AG8fJ50sxR8?si=jTsAS_siwnvXCLj2" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/AG8fJ50sxR8?si=jTsAS_siwnvXCLj2</a>
I'm not quite sure I get it, the album itself is kind of...mid? It's 2+ hours of an aggressively boring take on the previous decade's music ideals desperately in need of an editor.<p>Honestly, it solidifies the ideal that with the vast quantity of new music released today, that if damn near every song isn't worth the listener's time, those songs don't belong on an album, they don't belong on a remix album, they don't belong on a deluxe edition, they really only have a place in live shows, livestreams, or anthologies when you're dead.
I have zero interest in going to a geo cities website to burnish my non existent hipster musical credentials. It's just a marketing stunt and evidently successful.
Exciting!<p>“Cindy Lee, a 32-song left-of-center”.<p>Political music is ok. I love Peter Paul and Mary! But it ain’t the future. It’s retro; retrograde.