You already note that there are numerous companies online that profess to help musicians gain attention and/or sell their music, and you already subtly nod to the fact that they really don’t work unless the musicians themselves understand that they are all just tools to be applied to a long term strategy for selling their music.
"I think records were just a little bubble through time and those who made a living from them for a while were lucky. There is no reason why anyone should have made so much money from selling records except that everything was right for this period of time. I always knew it would run out sooner or later."
Yesterday the Criterion Collection launched its very own Hulu channel! Quoth Criterion: “Currently showing are The Tale of Zatoichi, The Tale of Zatoichi Continues, New Tale of Zatoichi, The Fugitive, On the Road,and Zatoichi and the Chest of Gold.
The radio industry is going nuts, worrying that younger listeners have abandoned the medium and consider it Squaresville, while they do their music listening on digital players, cell phones and online.Try telling that to the thousands of youngsters who've graduated from Youth Radio, or to the two guys who are in the organization's lobby in downtown Oakland, hunched over their applications, hoping to get into its tuition-free program.
Things over here have been pretty busy lately. Both Austinist and WOXY are in the middle of SXSW planning, I’ve got an addition being built on the house, the better half is on tour with his band, Shearwater, and I recently had a root canal. All of the above have kept me away from the blog more than I’d like. I anticipate posting and mixtapes to return to normal sometime in March. Until then, you can expect the links, the occasional mp3 and hopefully a few more mixtapes before the end of winter. This mix is one that I’m really pleased with. One band that I’m really excited about right now (as you can probably tell from their appearance on this mixtape twice and previous ones too) is Active Child. Pat Grossi’s voice is completely captivating – I can’t seem to get enough of his stuff. I really wish he was coming to SXSW, I would have booked him for a day party in a heartbeat. He has a 7″ out now and a cassette tape on Mirror Universe. Hopefully there’s a full-length in the works as well. Read more about him here. The rest of the mix kind of follows that same vibe, with a little punk rock and smooth hip hop vibes as well. Hope you enjoy it!
DOWNLOAD: VA – Hush (zip)
01 Psychobuildings “Birds of Prey”
02 Tanlines “Real Life”
03 Active Child “Body Heat (So Far Away)”
04 How to Dress Well “My Body”
05 Hard Mix “One Thing”
06 Mount McKinley “Rainsand”
07 Phantogram “Mouthful of Diamonds”
08 Japandroids “Art Czars”
09 Twin Sister “Ribbon Bow”
10 Glasser “Apply” (Tanlines Remix)
11 Toro y Moi “Timed Pleasure” (Body Language Remix)
12 Active Child “Voice of an Old Friend”
In cases like this, attacks on music blogs seem to be the latest example of the widening disconnect between the goals of the music industry's promotional wing and its enforcement wing. Smart musicians and promoters understand that the Net is a powerful promotional tool, and know that sharing an artist's music is the best way to earn new fans. The IFPI, on the other hand, writes clearly in its takedown notices that "Our top priority is to prevent the continued availability of the IFPI Represented Companies' content on the internet." We've already seen this divergence of interests play out in recent fiascos surrounding bands like OK Go and Death Cab For Cutie. And the television industry has seen similar problems in its attacks on YouTube.
Lo-fi’s return to low-cost, outdated recording technologies, which Beaumont-Thomas decried as a “retro” fad, was in fact a move toward the democratization of the music-making process. And while it did not discuss politics directly, lo-fi and its nostalgia for the past constituted a critique of society’s failure to deliver the egalitarian future that technological progress once promised.
Akron/Family is encouraging folks to share in the collective experience that is music and record a version of their tune “Woody Guthrie’s America.” In exchange, the trio will put you on the guest list for any of their headlining shows. Check out the details and their upcoming tour dates after the jump.
i know, with a terrible certainty, that one day my son will turn to me and ask, “why are they called mix-tapes? huh what’s a tape? why isn’t it called a ‘mix-file’?”, and like a melancholy robot, overcome with nostalgia for the lost tactility of certain dead technologies, and keenly aware that me too i’m a dead technology, i’ll put my dumb arms around him and weep like a motherless child.
David Byrne walks in increasingly frenetic circles while reading the titles of films released in 1986.
My name is Paige Maguire. I am a freelance web designer and writer, music editor at Austinist, Director of Marketing & Development at WOXY, and I live in Austin.
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