Wave of the Future: Fans Subscribing to Songwriters?

Here at ThinkSong, we read the news about the collapse of the major record labels so you don't have to. Specifically, "The Album, a Commodity in Disfavor" in the New York Times. Here's the useful part, for futurists out there:

Many music executives dispute the idea that the album will disappear. In particular, they say, fans of jazz, classical, opera and certain rock (bands like Radiohead and Tool) will demand album-length listening experiences for many years to come. But for other genres — including some strains of pop music, rap, R&B and much of country — where sales success is seen as closely tied to radio air play of singles, the album may be entering its twilight.

“For some genres and some artists, having an album-centric plan will be a thing of the past,” said Jeff Kempler, chief operating officer of EMI’s Capitol Music Group. While the traditional album provides value to fans, he said, “perpetuating a business model that fixates on a particular packaged product configuration is inimical to what the Internet enables, and it’s inimical to what many consumers have clearly voted for.”

Another solution being debated in the industry would transform record labels into de facto fan clubs. Companies including the Warner Music Group and the EMI Group have been considering a system in which fans would pay a fee, perhaps monthly, to “subscribe” to their favorite artists and receive a series of recordings, videos and other products spaced over time.

Executives maintain that they must establish more lasting connections with fans who may well lose interest if forced to wait two years or more before their favorite artist releases new music.

Critics: A Critique

I went to see Kurt Elling's 10 pm set at Yoshi's on Thursday night. His chops are amazing, and, as I commented to the table mates I had just met as I was finding a seat to watch the show, the most uncanny thing is that he sounds exactly like his recordings! Elling's pitch is unerring, and the unusual timbre and resonance of his voice were powerfully present, not buried in the mix as so many of us singers end up. I ended up buying a "digital download" for $15 (too steep!) of his latest album, Nightmoves, which consists of a jewel case with everything but the disc--perhaps it has to do with the album's April 3 street date. He's been touring extensively to promote this, his maiden effort on the Concord label. I can't say enough about how creative and masterful he is as a poet and singer. The Rumi-influenced vocalese lyric on Ellington's "I Like the Sunrise" is based on Von Freeman's improvisation in a 2002 recording--check out these words (here's where you can find the entire lyric):

Don’t worry about saving this music
or be scared if the singing ends or the piano breaks a string
for we have fallen to a place where everything is music and singing
everything is recovered and new
ever new and musical and even if the whole world’s harp should burn up
there would still be hidden there
the spirit of song there to linger on

I also loved his cover of Betty Carter's composition Tight. I've never done vocalese, but he inspires me to try in the future.

So here's where the critic comes in: The day before, I read a review of Elling in the paper that essentially said he was slick and technically flawless, but would never be considered among jazz's greats because he has no heart or soul. Ouch!! And the drag is, having read that, it lingered in the back of my mind during the performance, as I evaluated his moves based on this one critic's comment, wondering if they were too calculated. Ultimately, I discarded this notion, blown away by the depth of poetry and the Sinatra-to-Stevie Wonder-like range Elling displayed. The next day, my singer/writer friend Emily pointed out that they used to level the same charge at Ella Fitzgerald, a criticism that has always annoyed me terribly. What, do you have to be a heroin addict to have feeling? Isn't the joy in Ella's voice a feeling? "I think they tend to say that about singers who are really skilled," Emily said. "Sometimes people want to hear something rough."

All this got me thinking about how critics frame our response to the arts.

Criticism is necessary, or if not necessary, instinctive. We all judge. Critics, of course, are paid to have opinions, and I again speak from journalistic experience when I say it's easy to sound opinionated, but hard to fully support your statements with evidence. As critical as I am of myself and others in daily life, I try to avoid criticizing musicians and singers publicly--why punish my peers for making themselves available and vulnerable on stage? And I especially avoid the "you asked for it" backlash that writers often employ, stooping to cheap psychoanalysis of all performers as attention-seekers. Few call writers, dentists or executives attention-seekers, but anyone who takes pride in their work seeks the attention of others in the form of readers, patients or customers, right?

The other aspect of criticism is the cloak of legitimacy it weaves--granted, a legitimacy those of us with nascent careers are actively in search of. A wonderful example of this came to light the other day in the New York Times: A little known British pianist, Joyce Hatto, recorded more than 120 CDs of the classical piano repertoire from 1989 until her death in 2006 at age 77. "Intriguingly, she gave to the music a developed although oddly malleable personality. She could do Schubert in one style, and then Prokofiev almost as though she was a new person playing a different piano — an astonishing, chameleon-like artistic ability," writes Dennis Dutton. She was revered as a "prodigy of old age."

Turns out, after reams of critical praise, it was only last month that the British magazine Gramaphone discovered that she and had ripped off every last recording from other pianists' recordings. The moral, according to Dutton? "Music isn’t just about sound; it is about achievement in a larger human sense. If you think an interpretation is by a 74-year-old pianist at the end of her life, it won’t sound quite the same to you as if you think it’s by a 24-year-old piano-competition winner who is just starting out. Beyond all the pretty notes, we want creative engagement and communication from music, we want music to be a bridge to another personality. Otherwise, we might as well feed Chopin scores into a computer." He finishes with the observation that, to his surprise, there are young pianists toiling in obscurity of whom he should be aware.

Look, I understand the whole problem of being overwhelmed by the volume of recorded material out there, but to assume that only a handful of pearls lie at the bottom of the vast musical ocean leads to the emporer's new clothes syndrome, where critics follow each others' lead and lavish praise on one safe bet (who turns out to be a fraud) while ignoring others who would require them to risk their reputations (and test their own technical knowledge) by evaluating the unknown.

It's like velvet paintings. When I, raised in an intellectual Berkeley family, married Emilio, from a small town in Mexico, we spent years battling the taste issue. Early on, I was forced to explain why velvet paintings were kitsch. Only I couldn't, other than to say I just "knew" velvet paintings were in poor taste. Now, with all the TV shows I admittedly love to watch, is there an epidemic of uniform "good" taste defined by the critics who police fashion, home decor, child rearing, food and music? I'm all for beauty, but I want to absorb the arts first, and judge them later--according to my own criteria, not the standard checklist of pedigree, hipness, branding, looks or popularity.

Enough opining, I'm off to view the YouTube editor's picks (they have editors?) in the humor category...

A Great 2007 Grammy Show

Pop music is a pleasure I refuse to feel guilty about, and this year's Grammy show proved to me why there's a lot to love about popular American music. First off, I think musicians are a lot more adept at carrying off an award show without a lot of awkwardness, unlike movie actors (which is why I can only watch the Oscars while doing something else in another room). Imagine the pressure of performing under these circumstances, let alone really nailing it!

Second, there are live acoustic performances and unusual pairings that just come off great, such as this one with Corinne Bailey Rae, John Legend and John Mayer. I missed Beyonce, but caught her on YouTube--wow! There is a nice descending chromatic riff that she sings at the end of the song that shows off her vocal chops.

Shakira bellydance!!! I predict a huge bellydance craze as a result. She really can dance, unlike a woman we recently saw on Mexican TV with a lot of "pechonalidad," as Emilio put it, who wore the golden garb but couldn't swivel the hips with precision.

And the dancing! I was not aware of Chris Brown, but this is probably one of the best demonstrations of stepping during primetime ever seen. He has his own gravity! Justin Timberlake did a pretty good job too. And the montage that honored deceased musicians (including songwriter Soraya, at age 37 from breast cancer) finished with a powerful superimposition of a video of James Brown dancing and a tap dancer on stage duplicating and riffing on his moves. Oh, Christina Aguilera and Mary J. Blige also tore it up, although both were borderline oversinging. But even that is an education in how to command a performance, even when not everything comes out perfectly. That said, I didn't see any technical glitches, unlike past years.

I thought it was kind of funny that The Red Hot Chili Peppers exhorted young kids to go out and form rock bands. Ah, yet another American music crying out for preservation--Lincoln Center 2050, Winton Marsalis IV leads the rock and roll education and outreach program. I'm sorry, I guess it's the devil's advocate in me--but why don't people understand that music constantly evolves?