kinetoscope five :: 001 :: musings on music today

[jkn]

I posted this on the rM community - reposting here.  Comment there or here - fine with me!  (I have already responded to a question over there so you might want to pop over there for a sec...)   http://relaxedmachinery.ning.com/profiles/blogs/kinetoscope-five-001-musings-on-music-today

I thought I'd relaunch my 'kinetoscope' series of blogs and post one now and then.   This blog is primarily about music, either current, future, or past experiences.



Interesting times with music and the internet lately. Of course, everyone had noticed this... but the barrier to release is pretty much zero now. You don't have to go through 'gatekeeper' labels to get your music out there. Soundcloud, Bandcamp, Youtube, Vimeo, CD Baby, Tunecore, Netlabels, and Achive.org all provide many easy outlets, either free, freemium, or cost based models.

The bar is so many rungs lower, we really couldn't have a limbo party.

I think this is great. Technology and people have provided the ideas to new distribution models. Listeners have shifted in droves to listening on ipods and now the shift to the cloud is in massive swing.

The only downside, and it's a small downside compared to the ability for anyone with the drive to go do it to make it happen... is there is no longer a clear path to getting heard by a lot of people.  There are so many paths up the mountain, and so many people making that climb - that it's easy to get lost in the avalanche of artists and releases every day.

I think that's where labels come in to play now... a label can be the tastemaker, gate keeper, curator, whatever word you want to use.  You pretty much know that a release on my label, Relaxed Machinery, is going to be ambient in one of ambient's many forms.  You know Lotuspike, Hypnos, DataObscura, AD21, Groove, Timeroom, Feedback Loop, Earth Mantra, etc. etc. etc...   they've created identies.  By working with certain artist, having a vision...

Podcasts and reviewers and bloggers can all serve that same purpose... being curator, tastemaker, gate keeper... if you find someone's who's opinions you trust - they can be go to sources for who next to listen to.  It's interesting how wonderful this world of music truly is now.

Before the internet... I was lucky to find 2 or 3 people locally who knew half the artists I love.  Now you're all at my fingertips here on Relaxed Machinery Community - or the Hypnos Forum - or whereever...

Where are we heading... we have to be heading to better file quality. FLAC solves this - but it's not available on ipods which are the single largest portable player - and FLAC through the cloud I doubt is ready for primetime.  I love to buy FLAC's because now I have a source file as good as CD - literally bit by bit as good as CD - and I can convert it to my ipod for easy listening at work - but hear the full audio spectrum at home in my studio.

Ok that's enough musing for today.

I look forward to your comments and questions - and thank you for indulging me!

John K-N
owner / artist
Relaxed Machinery - organic .: ambient
http://relaxedmachinery.com
 
image:  I took at Springdale Cemetery, Peoria, IL, USA - full image:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/johei/3949289628/#in/set-72157622317938639

[ffcal]

Hi John,

I would echo Pete's (Igneous Flame) comments on your Relaxed Machinery blog that the need for a curator can be important, whether you are a label that offers physical CDs or CDRs or a netlabel.  There's just too much out there to able to sample randomly with any degree of satisfaction.

Have to disagree with you on the flood of available music being the only downside to a cloud-based model.  Royalties can be a touchy issue; unless you are getting airplay on satellite radio, it is doubtful that you will receive much for streaming on sites like last.fm, for example (I have yet to receive a penny from that site, BTW, though I have had a three-year presence there).  From what I've heard, Pandora may be the only site that offers a decent steaming royalty.  Online cloud storage sounds like a variation on streaming from a shared server; it may be good deal for the listener, but maybe not so great for the artist.  I also prefer a physical CD format to a digital one, though I know others may have strong views in the other direction.

Forrest

[jkn]

Oh I agree with you... Spotify has become almost legendary in it's short existence...  you need like 20,000 plays to get a dollar?   (yeah - I'm making that up but the data is out there somewhere it's ludicrous.)

I'm not trying to say these are necesssarily good for the artist things... I'm just saying like it or not... people (the non-audio-file-non-people-who-read-here) are going to be going there to listen.