It's all about the content, the decline of the album, how to make money off music part XXVII, and a million other things

The title of this post is a twenty word summary of a recent article in musicradar, which tries to cover far too much ground and comes off rather unfocused IMO, but still curates a number of important issues that I often think about.  There's nothing particularly surprising in there (besides, perhaps, the lead singer of the Soup Dragons having a second career as a successful DJ), but consider the following:

1)  I disagree with this quote from the decidedly old-school Cinthie: "Back in the day you could really tour with a good album for two years. At the moment it feels like you only get the attention for two weeks and then the crowd is screaming for new music." 

In the sense that an overarching music press doesn't really exist anymore, and that no album can generate critical discourse much beyond the week before and week after its release, this is correct.  But to a band's fans, the tour is the thing and critical attention is just one hub in the giant PR release to promote their brand, potential licensing opportunities, and any upcoming tours.  There is still plenty of money to be made in touring, especially with the cost of live events being sky high across so many avenues of entertainment (and yet not sky high because demand is through the roof and people are happy to pay the asking price)

2) One of the reasons I have all but given up on new album releases is the sense that the album doesn't need to exist anymore.  Many artists can get by with drips of new singles, EP's and miscellaneous content.  Playlists are omnipresent, many people don't even listen to a specific artist for more than a track or two, let alone listen to albums from start to finish.  You don't need a new album to go on tour if the fan base is up for it.  The album isn't the once every few years grand statement that it once was.  

3) The article correctly laments the notion that music is a basic commodity that one can, and should, get for free.  The demand for vinyl is a reaction to this -- a need to prescribe value to music by people who still value their music collections.  

4) In the 90's the business model for the music industry was simple because for all intents and purposes, there was only one product on sale.  The CD album was sold for exorbitant prices, and those sales could be milked for over two years by staggered releases of singles and music videos to the relevant outlets.  Some major artists didn't even have to tour because their album sales kept them happy, rich, and relevant.  I think many of the lamentations about the lack of a new model come from people who built their careers on the old model.  They don't want to go back to the way things were, but they miss the old sentiments.  Selling music was more straightforward, and you knew what needed to be done to make a living.  Now the business is too fractured, and disproportionate power is held by streaming giants that perpetuate a compensation model that is horrible for the artists.  I don't know the way out of it, but I don't think there's much hope in returning to a simple solution again.  In the same way that I enjoy consuming music in many forms (CD, vinyl, streaming, downloads, social media, at home, at work, in the car, and in various combinations of the above), artists will also need to navigate a complex web of options, and it's quite possible that no "winning" model will ever emerge again.   

Jeff Mills, "Live at the Liquid Room"

Without exaggeration, I believe that  Gabriel Szatan's retrospective review of Jeff Mills' legendary "Live at the Liquid Room" mix is one of the best articles about techno ever written.   He provides invaluable history on the conceptualization and recording of the album, all of which was new to me.  It's so important to get these details written down before such priceless anecdotes from first hand observers are lost forever.  He also hits upon many of the big questions regarding techno's refusal to evolve and its current identity crisis.  In short, when your music is the future, there's a sense that you don't need to evolve, rather, you can play the long game and wait for the surroundings to evolve to you.  However, when you can literally beam hundreds of years of music history to a handheld device in an instant, then technology isn't cool and futuristic anymore.  In fact it's the opposite -- overfamiliarity has rendered it bland and ordinary.  Techno is turning into the Detroit equivalent of Haight-Ashbury.  Everyone who wasn't there at the time is tired of hearing about the promise and potential behind the music.  Those who can't give up their tie-dye from decades ago are sad old hippies who won't recognize that the world has evolved since their heyday.   In addition, in the 21st century, modern pop producers have been scavenging techno for ideas and seamlessly integrating them into today's music.  When the beats and sounds have already become mainstream, then being a techno purist and dreaming of a post-GM cybernetic Detroit starts feeling a bit quaint and outdated. 

The techno vanguard seem to recognize this stasis, and understand that they are legends stuck in the past, and nobody knows the way forward.  It's cool that Carl Craig can do whatever he wants (he's earned it) and can return to his jazz roots or collaborate with orchestras, but on the other hand, none of it feels as fresh or daring as it did twenty or even ten years ago.  Speaking of Carl Craig, a recent interview in Musicradar touches on many of the same themes as Szatan's review.  His experience is invaluable and it's great that he's still creative and very active, but that's the impression you'd get when reading any one of a million interviews with a Pete Townshend or David Gilmour in the 90's in Q or Rolling Stone.  

Back to Mills, I have long been in awe of "Live At the Liquid Room", my bewildered, breathless reaction to the album set me on a mission to see him play live, which through various circumstances, didn't happen for another fifteen years.   At the time, Mills' technical wizardry almost defied belief.  In the days before digital DJ'ing, how could someone play so aggressively, insistently, and at such breakneck speed?  Perhaps the drama is lessened when one can imagine AI bots reproducing such a mix with regularity.   But which resources do you use to train an algorithm when there's only one man alive who could pull it off?