Music Opinion Blog

Opinions and occasional rants about the state of the music scene. The views expressed are entirely my own, and do not represent those of any artists or publications with whom I may be connected.

Instagram’s TOS vs. FIle-sharers

Posted on December 20, 2012 by Tim Hall

I’ve seen one too many retweets of this, or other with similar wording in the wake of the Instragram’s “All your photo are belong to us” announcement (From which they appear to have backtracked) It’s got the point where I’m willing to unfollow people who retweet it.

It’s difficult to know where to start when unpacking everything that’s wrong with that Tweet.

For a start, it makes the assumption that “the internet” is one vast undifferentiated mass, and the same people who took exception to Instragram’s TOS are those who illegally share music on an industrial scale. As one who probably spends a four-figure sum on music a year I have every right to take offence at that.

And while I don’t condone illegal filesharing, it’s true that I’m on record as being heavily critical of some of the draconian measures such as SOPA and ACTA proposed by the lobbyists for the big studios and record companies, which I see as a power-grab by big corporations which is unlikely to benefit many actual creators. I don’t see any contradiction or double standard between that and thinking Instagram’s TOS is a stupid dick move. Surely both are examples of abuse of power by big companies to screw over the little guys?

And finally, in terms of passive-aggressiveness, this one’s just off the scale. Exactly what do @RainsBand hope to achieve? If they’re going to complain about “Shitty Instagram photos”, do they really think it will make anyone more likely to listen to their shitty music

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Charlie Stross on dealing with reviews

Posted on December 20, 2012 by Tim Hall

A very, very good blog post by author Charlie Stross, one of my favourite writers, on how to deal with online reviews.

Reviews by regular readers, as opposed to professional critics, are like the publishers’ proverbial slushpile: a seething, shouting mass of logorrhea in which a few gems may be submerged, if you can bear to hold your nose for long enough to find them.

But for an author to make a habit of ignoring feedback is pretty much the first step on a slippery slope down into a mire of self-indulgent solipsistic craziness.

Further down, he makes a very good point. Not only are unrelentingly negative reviews not worth reading, but neither are the uncritically positive.

Similarly: if you write and publish novels on a regular basis, you will acquire a core of fans, and they will do their five star cheerleader thing in the Amazon fora and reviews every time you emit a new fart, whether fragrant or otherwise. You should strive to ignore these reviews. No, seriously. While it’s probably okay to indulge yourself and roll around in them if you’re feeling down, you should not take them seriously

While he’s naturally talking about book reviews, I think the same principles apply for criticism of any kind of creative endeavour, including music reviews of the sort that appear on this site. I would like to hope that the majority of the reviews I write fall into the “perceptive 60%” he talks about.

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The Guardian Needs More Dom Lawsons

Posted on December 19, 2012 by Tim Hall

The Guardian have been doing their annual rundown of the Albums of The Year (Their #1 was Frank Ocean‘s Channel Orange, if anyone reading this blog actually cares). As usual, it’s assembled from votes by individual writers. I have always thought that such aggregated lists complied by a committee are a complete waste of space. Regardless of the mechanism used to tally up votes, they end up favouring the lowest common denominator, which at the moment seems to be faux-edgy indie-rock and commercial R&B at the expense of the more diverse and interesting.

Far more interesting and illuminating is the individual critics top tens, which is a good guide to which of their critics are worth taking seriously, and which ones are not.

When comparing with my own end-of-year list, there are two in common with Dom Lawson’s list, Gojira‘s “L’Enfant Sauvage” and Marillion‘s “Sounds That Can’t Be Made“. None of my other albums of the year appear on the lists of a single Guardian writer. I recognise some of my choices are independent releases by artists without large PR budgets that might not be on the radars of those whose exposure to new music is limited to major-label freebies. But the absence of a record like Anathema‘s “Weather Systems” does make one question the depth and breadth of The Guardian’s writers’ musical horizons.

What’s very telling is just how much Dom Lawson’s albums of the year are completely out of line with the rest of The Guardian’s. A few days earlier a couple of Guardian writers were making rather arch remarks on Twitter about Guardian commenters complaining about the lack of Swans and Scott Walker on the official Guardian list. Then Dom Lawson goes and puts those two at the very top of his list.

This does give me the impression that Dom’s taste in music is more widely shared by the readership than some of their other writers seem to realise. What The Guardian really needs is far more writers like Dom Lawson, not specifically metal fans, but people with a deep knowledge and love of different non-mainstream genres. They can pension off some of the surplus superannuated NME types to make room for them.

Posted in Music Opinion | Tagged | 5 Comments

We will only have a functional digital music economy when artists, labels and web services can all agree on what services are viable as revenue streams and which ones are primarily promotional channels. Too many of the arguments over royalties seem to stem from a blurring of the two.

Posted on December 3, 2012 by Tim Hall | 2 Comments

The Mercury Music Prize is not about celebrating the best of British music in all it’s diversity. It’s about selling records to people who know nothing about music but want to appear cool and sophisticated.

Posted on November 1, 2012 by Tim Hall | Comments Off

Disintermediation

Posted on October 20, 2012 by Tim Hall

In yet another post on the state of the music industry, Steve Lawson muses on the oft-repeated statistic that file-sharers spend more on music.

Are we part of the ongoing viability of their music practice, or not? There are lots of ways of being that, far beyond blunt figures about where we get hold of particular recordings from (and a whole lot of material on BitTorrent isn’t available to buy anywhere anyway), but are we part of the healthy future for disintermediated music, or are we just trying to see how much we can get away with? Cos I’ve got no interest in the people in the latter group… Music has given me far too much in my life not to want to give back…

What we don’t know (and there may not be any way of telling) is the extent to filesharing changes not just how people will spend on music, but what sort of music they will buy. There is a lot of anecdotal evidence to suggest that they’re spending less on heavily-promoted “mainstream” music much of which doesn’t live up to the hype. But instead they’re spending more on artists not signed to the major labels and their subsidiaries who don’t benefit from huge promotional budgets. Quite a bit of this is direct sales from artists, which frequently don’t show up in official statistics; the disintermediation of which Steve Lawson speaks.

If this is true, it would explain why so many of those who shout the loudest against the evils of filesharing are not artists, but marketing types and execs who have the most to lose from disintermediation. These people always claim to speak on behalf of artists, even though independent artists can speak for themselves. Is this just because nobody really cares if the likes or record pluggers have to seek alternative employment?

No that I condone people who download huge amounts of music without any intention of paying for a note of it. But I’ve never bought into the argument that the sky is falling, and the only way the “creative industries” can be saved is to give the big labels and studios unchecked power to shut down any parts of the internet they don’t like. As Bloom.fm’s Oleg Formenko said on Twitter, piracy is what happens when there are no legal alternatives at prices the market is willing to pay.

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The Rolling Stones – Corporate Rock at it’s Worst?

Posted on October 15, 2012 by Tim Hall

So The Rolling Stones are apparently charging £406 (including fees) for floor-level seats at their recently-announced O2 Arena shows. The Felix Baumgartner level seats are admittedly a bit cheaper, but this is still completely taking the piss.

Surely no band is worth that sort of money.

They appear to be targeting the corporate hospitality market now, pricing ordinary music fans out of the market. Yes, I’m sure some people with far more money than sense will be willing to fork out stupid amounts to try and relive their youth, without thinking of how far that £406 will go supporting the grass roots music scene instead. But I bet the audience will be full of celebrities and people there purely to flaunt their wealth and be seen.

Is this what rock and roll is supposed to be about?

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Do musical genre labels (Rock, pop, metal, prog, folk, symphonic or whatever) make far more sense if you think of them more as ingredients than as pigeonholes?

What do you think?

Posted on October 12, 2012 by Tim Hall | 9 Comments

He even looks like Nigel Tufnel

Posted on October 12, 2012 by Tim Hall

Some rather OTT 80s-style shred metal from Michael Angelo Batio. Anyone else waiting to see if he starts playing it with a violin, or is it just me?

Can’t honestly say I think much of this style of guitar playing – It comes over to me as all technical virtuosity for it’s own sake, without nearly enough soul or emotion.

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What I Like About Rock

Posted on October 7, 2012 by Tim Hall

Rock is frequently a fight between the lead singer and the lead guitarist for the spotlight. Not, of course, a literal fight, especially if it involves David Coverdale, Ritchie Blackmore and a plate of spaghetti. But it’s a dynamic of the lead guitar and the lead vocal as a foil for one another that’s a big part of what makes rock exciting for me.

It’s also why I find a lot of “indie” and “alternative” guitar music less interesting, because they tend to relegate the guitar to a supporting role, with the vocals as the only source of melody and everything else purely for rhythm. It’s possibly why it’s hard for a band to do a successful indie/rock crossover, because audiences want different things. Many indie and alternative fans loathe guitar solos with a passion. Strip out the solos to appease them without putting anything else in their place, and rock fans will find the results unsatisfying.

Of course, some metal has gone the other way and marginalised the vocals in favour of the guitars. Where are today’s Ronnie Dios and Rob Halfords?

Posted in Music Opinion | 11 Comments