April 2009
How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart... →
minimoonstar:
by Philip K. Dick (1978)
When all things began, the brand name already was. Magnificently kooky. XD;;
The best kind of mentalist. My favourite bit is where he deduces that all time is in fact the time period of the Book of Acts.
Compromise & Entitlement
Newpapers and the recording industry have a few things in common: they’re both “old media”, their business models are currently failing, they both seem to attract a fair amount of online schadenfreude over this fact. But something else too: they’re both businesses built on compromise - or more specifically, the acceptance of the idea of compromise among their audience.
A...
Golden Oldies
Replying to this (surely anyone who reads me also reads Mike? Well, you should.) - yes, the emphasis on teens/young people skews my info a bit. But I also think this is a bit of a US/UK difference - not quite sure why that would be, but there you go.
In the UK, the #1 albums this year have been by Kings Of Leon, U2, The Script, Springsteen, White Lies…. all with older-buyer (or cross-range...
Me and the death of newspapers
Just left this comment on a blog post about saving newspapers:
The value of a newspaper to me is a combination of information, serendipity and time. Information, in that I buy a paper intending to read about certain things. Serendipity, in that I will read some stuff I didn’t know I wanted to read. Time, in that the balance between information and serendipity is a function of how much time I have...
Giving a shit
I give a shit about what the latest internet memes are, because I like to understand Tumblr, Twitter, LJ etc. But if someone asked me to pay to understand those memes, I would look at them as if crazy.
What do people value more - a social object, or the conversation that takes place around that object? The object is vitally important - it enables the conversation. Does that mean it has a monetary...
The Trouble With Pop →
This is own-trumpet-blowing but there’s some really good commentary on the state of pop and the pop audience (from a British perspective naturally) on this FT podcast post.
“The most striking thing to me about this isn’t: Downloading possibly leads to...”
– Scott Plagenhoef, on Lost In Translation: The Problems With The “Pirates Buy More Music” Study
This is a very very very good point. Since it isn’t a longitudinal study (er, taking place over time), the thing being measured isn’t how much music illegal downloaders buy, but how much more they buy...
“Punk-meets-disco is an awkward proposition”
– BUDDYHEAD: For The Children Since 1997
um, guys?
(via offnotesnotes)
It’s Blitz has brought the dinosaurs out alright - the Tiny Mix Tapes review spent most of its length fulminating against “dance-pop” and saying Karen O was suspect for singing about sex rather than sexual...
Chasin' A Dream →
“What separates crazy dreams from viable business ideas? I don’t think that it has anything to do with the idea, or the profession, or the market itself. It has to do with the person….Real creative urges, those we are meant to express, don’t go away. If ignored, they bother us, affect our health, fester and eventually turn us into the living dead.”
Or of course it could be...
Twittersharking
I have noticed a disturbing yet inevitable trend on Twitter, viz. guys who only seem to reply to or retweet hot young ladies, usually giving them overly hearty encouragement. Here’s an example (remove underscore in username).* It reminds me of the suspiciously warm welcome you used to get on ILX if you turned up with a female username and said something nice about Pavement.
*of course by...
somesongsconsidered:
“(Keep Feeling)...
Future of music talk needed
Help put some flesh on a straw man!
I’m looking for articles/commentary/blogs arguing that the collapse of the music industry will be a good thing for musicians from the point of view of their artistic integrity.
Anywhere I should be looking?
Scritti Politti - “Umm”: Three reasons...
Tricky Disco - “Tricky Disco”: Man,...
Join or die →
curiouslypersistent:
Artist paints herself having sex with each American president. In chronological order.
The sound of the suburbs →
In the (very interesting) conversation happening on this post there’s discussion about whether “suburban” or “safe” could be words used to valorise pop. This is my attempt to do exactly that, in an old FT essay from April 2000.
I'm Against The 00s
And the specific engine that will make this inevitable thing happen will, I think, be this recession. Speculation on what the recession will mean for today’s music is generally idiotic, but maybe speculation on what it will mean for YESTERDAY’S music is on firmer ground. From the distressed vantage point of the early 90s, for instance, much of the pop of the early 80s looked...
On Pearl Jam's "Ten" And '90s Revisionism →
barthel:
I look at the reviews of the recent Pearl Jam reissue and draw some conclusions about our tolerance for embarrassment and the process of papering over the more regrettable aspects of pop culture.
Embarrassment is the first stage in the process Mike’s describing at the end of his piece (which I liked, but the specifics didn’t resonate with me cos I’m a Brit and so the...
Hold on hold on what is this new “question” “got an answer for…?” thing on tumblr?
OMG I see a box flashing on and off saying “Let people answer this.”
Except it’s gone now. Perhaps because I haven’t ended that paragraph with a question?
A-HA!!
“In this [suburban English male] world, American music— black American music—...”
– Simon Frith - Taking popular music seriously … - Google Book Search
with a few substitutions, this explains a lot about the state of contemporary music criticism.
(via offnotesnotes)
This is one of Frank Kogan’s key points.
I think it explains a lot of popular culture, and in fact business...
Twitter Traffic Explodes...And Not Being Driven by... →
mikearauz:
Reuters reporter Alexei Oreskovic recently authored an interesting blog post about the demographics of Twitter users. What he discovered was that 18-24 year olds, the traditional social media early…
Two factors the article and comment don’t mention:
- (A precis of Danah Boyd’s thinking on this topic) Twitter works best if you don’t control who gets to see your...
Worst Methodology Ever →
“[The authors] mined thousands of photographs from Getty Images that chronicled flashy parties and smaller affairs on both coasts for a year, beginning in March 2006. It was not a culturally comprehensive data set, the researchers admit, but a wide-ranging one. And because the photos were for sale, they had to be of events that people found inherently interesting, “a good proxy for...
maura:
americaneyes:
“why ‘link journalism’ won’t save your ass”, by andrew beaujon. via tinyluckygenius.
+1
I dunno Maura, this idea of link journalism seems revolutionary to me. A format in which writers post links and then comment on them? Curatorship? All it needs is a snappy name and it could really take off. “Surf log” maybe? “Web track”? Agh, it’s on the...
Is it a safe assumption that anyone with more than 5000 Twitter followers who I haven’t already heard of offline is a snake-oil salesman or bullshit artist?
