This Playlist is Eclectic and Bizarre, but Boy, It's Good

Lately I've been delving deeper and deeper into the worlds of eMusic and Lala searching for interesting music, and this week's playlist highlights some of the gems I've discovered. The selections come from a variety of genres and eras, but I think each track is interesting. I hope you enjoy!

All Over the Place, In a Good ...
When you're done listening, you may feel compelled to do something akin to what this dog is doing.

The Golden Age of Music

A recent New York Times article about the popularity of the South by Southwest Music Festival begins by proclaiming that "music still has fans," as if the author were surprised to find evidence that people still listen to music and show up to see their favorites bands perform in person.

The author clearly has missed the point, and it seems that a lot of people are making the wrong conclusions about what's currently taking place in the music industry. Yes, there has been -- and will continue to be -- a significant decline in the number of physical copies of albums sold; the sale of digital music, however, is increasing rapidly, and this bodes well for the future of music. Granted, it doesn't seem that digital sales have yet made up for the drop in CD sales, but I believe there's reason to be hopeful if you can look past a few common misconceptions about what's taking place.

Most people seem to view consumers' decreased willingness to pay more than $10 for an album (I can remember when I regularly paid $17 for CDs about ten years ago) as a drop in their demand for music. What this is, in fact, is an increase in the supply of music, which, as you should know from basic economic theory, causes its price to drop. Before digital music was available, consumers were forced to buy hard copies of albums from record stores. Consumers can still do this, of course, but they also have a multitude of other options to choose from when deciding where, and in what format, to buy music. This trend may be bad for big records labels, but it sure hasn't been bad for iTunes.

Smaller bands and labels also benefit significantly from the ability to distribute their music online. It used to be that the main concern of an up-and-coming band was to get noticed by a label because they needed help promoting and distributing their music. Now bands are much more able to focus on writing and recording music, and are able to reach out more directly to consumers online.

Most important to you and me, however, are the benefits to consumers. I recently met with the CEO of Lala (the music site you've likely heard me raving about), and he argued that right now is the "golden age of music." It's not hard to agree with him when considering how much better off the average music listener is as a result of the availability of digital music. It is significantly easier and cheaper today than ever before to discover, purchase, and listen to new music, and to take that music with you wherever you go.

Music, however, has not become free. Granted, you can sit online and download torrents all day, or you can mooch mp3's off your friends, but I say if you're a real fan of an artist or band, support them. Buy their music and merchandise, and see them live. Otherwise, they're going to quit making music, or they're going to sign to a major label and alter their sound to reach a larger audience, which is almost always bad. So get on Lala (or iTunes, eMusic, Amazon, or whatever) and download some music, and keep in mind that you're getting a lot more music for your money ($.10 for a web song?!) than was ever possible before.

Four Tet

One of my favorite "electronic" artists is Four Tet, and I'm going to his show on Saturday in San Francisco, so I figured he should be the feature of this week's playlist. Keep in mind when listening that the songs are composed of samples -- i.e., he's not playing live instruments. His extensive use of live/acoustic samples, however, creates an organic feel to (most of) his songs that I think is pretty unique in electronic music. It may take a few listens to really get into what he's created, but give him a chance. Also, some of my favorite songs of his are his remixes of Madvillain songs, which aren't available on Lala, so check those out if you like what you hear. Enjoy!

The Many Sides of Four Tet

Radiohead/Thom Yorke-related News

DOOM (formerly MF Doom, and also known by a variety of other names) is releasing a new album entitled Born Like This on March 24. Apparently Thom Yorke is remixing one of the tracks, though it looks like it may only be available as a bonus track if the album is purchased on iTunes. Damn...there goes my iTunes Boycott! You can hear a clip of the remixed track here (see the bottom of the article).

Also, this video of Radiohead and the USC Marching Band's Grammy rehearsal just showed up on YouTube. Check it out!

Neil Young: I Love Him

Neil Young is one of my favorite musicians and songwriters ever. He's been making music since the 1950s, and, over the course of his career, has crossed into many genres (some more successfully than others), but he's never failed to keep things interesting. His next album is supposedly going to be all about electric cars, and I'm sure it will be completely bizarre. Even on ridiculous albums such as this (and his last one, Living with War, all about the war in Iraq), he often manages to drop some worthwhile tracks, and these tracks, combined with those from his 31 other studio albums (that's not including the work he's done with other groups!), compose the unbelievably expansive and eclectic catalog that I'm so fond of. This week's Lala playlist features some of my favorite songs of his. I've included some quiet, somber love songs, and some thrashy rock songs (well, one, to be exact), and others that fall somewhere in between. I hope you enjoy it!

Neil Young

"Uhhhh" Podcast

I have a friend who has a bizarre habit of saying, "uhhhhhh" whenever he/she hears a song that has a certain sound (I've refrained from specifying their gender so as to protect the identity of the innocent). I'm not sure I can describe in words the type of songs that might evoke this response, so I've begun this week's podcast with "Spliff Mood" by Ooklah the Moc, which almost always brings out an "uhhhhh" from him/her. Listen to about 2 or 3 seconds of it and see if you don't feel the strange desire to make this grunt/groaning noise. The mix gets progressively more mellow and ends with a nice, relaxed reggae song. The playlist is eclectic -- it even includes a rap song (!) -- but hopefully not so much that it doesn't flow.

Also, I'm going to try using a Lala playlist as well as a podcast to provide more listening options, so let me know what you think. Enjoy!

Click here for the podcast.

Uhhhhhhh