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| Author |
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| 25 new of 165 responses total. |
krj
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response 38 of 165:
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Apr 21 17:22 UTC 2002 |
Very nice overview article from the Chicago Tribune on the
consolidation in the radio business, and spillover effects into
the record industry and Internet radio.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/showcase/chi-0204140469apr14.story?coll=
chi-n
ews-hed
"Rocking radio's world"
Quotes:
> Since 1996, Arbitron surveys show that the
> average time spent listening to radio by consumers
> 12 and older has dropped 9 percent. In the
> last two years, listenership has dropped more than
> 7 percent, Arbitron says. The young
> especially are tuning out: Teen-age listeners are
> down 11 percent, and people between the ages
> of 18 and 24 have declined 10 percent.
...
> Playlists at stations across the country
> continue to shrink, with only about 20 songs a week
> played with any regularity, most from the best-funded
> major labels. Many commercial stations say
> they play only records approved by their audience
> through extensive market-testing, but this
> practice has led to a numbing sameness of programming,
> with many of the same records played
> in the same formats from Miami to Seattle. In one week
> recently, the 40 biggest modern-rock
> stations in the country opened a total of 16
> slots for new records, and the 45 biggest top-40
> stations added a total of 20. That means that
> even though more than 30,000 CDs are released
> annually, the vast majority of the songs played
> at these stations is the same week after week, a
> pool of a few dozen artists who are also seen
> extensively on video networks such as MTV and
> VH1.
The quotes from the Clear Channel execs, about how they are only there
to serve the public, are particularly nauseating.
The article also reports that (KRJ paraphrasing) the RIAA is starting
to wake up to the idea that destroying the fledgling Web radio business
would be a bad move, in terms of choking off promotional opportunities
for record companies.
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mcnally
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response 39 of 165:
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Apr 21 22:11 UTC 2002 |
Meanwhile the New York Times has an article this week about the band
Wilco ( http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/21/arts/music/21PARE.html )
and their new album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Deemed unsuitable by Reprise,
a part of the Time-Warner-AOL media megacorp, the album was rejected.
The band, unhappy with their label support anyway and unwilling to be
forced into the alt-country niche in which Reprise had successfully
promoted their 1996 album "Being There" fought for and obtained control
over the recordings.. They shopped the completed album around and
eventually placed it with Nonesuch, another part of the Time-Warner-AOL
media megacorp.. Go figure.
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orinoco
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response 40 of 165:
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Apr 22 04:06 UTC 2002 |
In fact, there was a cute line in the article -- unfortunately, I don't have
it with me -- about how all the music company mergers allowed them to play
one branch of Time-Warner against another. It sounds like they were basically
going and asking dad when mom had already said no. Funny that those mergers
might actually have made it possible for this album to come out.
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mcnally
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response 41 of 165:
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Apr 22 06:02 UTC 2002 |
I think it's more likely that the mega-mergers make it increasingly
difficult for such albums to be released by marginalizing or frequently
eliminating the smaller labels which will take chances on music that
doesn't exactly fit into a recognized format, but in this case it does
sound like the band benefitted from the fact that the acquired labels
still retain some degree of independence/individuality.
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orinoco
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response 42 of 165:
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Apr 22 15:50 UTC 2002 |
Well, right. That's why I thought it was so ... ironic? Am I allowed to call
this irony?
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krj
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response 43 of 165:
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Apr 23 19:14 UTC 2002 |
The Boston Globe has the usual piece on the distress of the
music business:
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/111/living/Burned_+.shtml
Nothing really new here except one pair of sales statistics:
> It's also notable *where* the people who still buy music are buying it.
> Chains like Tower and Virgin are down 8 to 9 percent, according to
> SoundScan, while mass merchants such as Wal-Mart and Target (that is,
> stores that sell many other products besides CDs) are up 6 percent.
> That has a negative impact on the selection of music in record
> stores, because obviously, those retailers focus on the faster-selling
> hit-making acts, rather than exposing a lot of new, lesser-known
> CDs that sell fewer copies and take up space.
Tower and Virgin seem to be at $19 for top-line releases that aren't
on sale. What do Wal-Mart and Target charge? I never go there.
But I smell a price revolt.
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mcnally
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response 44 of 165:
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Apr 23 19:57 UTC 2002 |
Also interesting, Salon has a piece today centered around the struggle of
Joshua (?) Byrd, a music professor at a small college, to get Sony to pay
royalties on two obscure albums he released in the 1960s (and on their much
more recent CD reissues.) He claims that despite the fact that his works
remain in print (suggesting that they must be selling to someone, though I
can't imagine who..) Sony pays him no royalties and won't even acknowledge
his requests for sales figures.
The story makes it seem that this is common practice in the music industry
but unless you've got as much money on the line as the Dixie Chicks did
when they sued Sony that it's rarely economically feasible to collect from
a stonewalling record company.
I apologize for not digging up the URL but I've got nine or ten different
batch MP3 encodes going right now (part of the Great Leap Backwards) and
my CPU is thrashing so badly that using Mozilla to find the article would
probably take 10 minutes of staring at half-rendered screens..
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anderyn
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response 45 of 165:
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Apr 24 00:03 UTC 2002 |
This response has been erased.
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senna
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response 46 of 165:
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Apr 24 01:13 UTC 2002 |
Large-scale outlets have always been cheaper than Tower, Virgin, and company.
Back when Tower existed in the downtown Ann Arbor area (which continues to
disintegrate, I might add, and I'm a lot younger than you folk who know what
it was like when it was *really* good), I'd usually browse, perhaps purchase
an item or two that was harder to find, and do my actual CD buying at a place
like Best Buy. Best Buy's cd selection actually used to be better and more
appealing, in my opinion. Anyway, I saw little point in actually spending
money there when the same stuff was considerably more affordable elsewhere.
I'm surprised this is even newsworthy. :)
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jaklumen
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response 47 of 165:
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Apr 24 01:59 UTC 2002 |
Of course large-scale outlets are cheaper than smaller stores. The
smaller stores usually find a niche getting more unusual recordings
and such. For example, a used tape and CD store earned most of its
money through orders of boxed sets.
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senna
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response 48 of 165:
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Apr 24 03:20 UTC 2002 |
Indeed. Tower and Virgin are not niche stores, though.
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krj
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response 49 of 165:
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Apr 24 18:06 UTC 2002 |
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/newsarticle.asp?nid=15817&afl=mnew
> "Retail Hopes Ride on Nelly, Korn"
>
> "Slumping industry puts faith in blockbuster summer releases"
>
> Record stores are looking to summer releases from
> the likes of Nelly, Korn and Eminem to help recover
> from a dismal first quarter of 2002, when album
> sales dropped nearly TEN PERCENT compared with last
> year. ((emphasis KRJ))
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krj
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response 50 of 165:
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Apr 24 18:39 UTC 2002 |
Mike in resp:41 on Wilco's move from the Reprise imprint to the
Nonesuch imprint, both within the AOL Time Warner empire:
> ...but in this case it does
> sound like the band benefitted from the fact that the acquired labels
> still retain some degree of independence/individuality
... except that neither Reprise nor Nonesuch were ever independent
labels; both were Warner Bros. divisions since their creation.
Reprise was originally started so Frank Sinatra could have his own
label, IIRC, and for many years it was where Warner stuck many of
its prestige/quirky artists, most notably Neil Young, who I think saved
the label from being killed off when it was floundering some years
back. Nonesuch was founded as Warner's classical division in the
early 1960s and it had a glorious history; in the last ten years or
so the brand has been repositioned as a world music/serious art label,
with a lot of licensing of European issues (artists such as Radio
Tarifa, Oumou Sangare, Ali Farka Toure, Youssou N'Dour).
More recently Nonesuch has picked up Emmylou Harris after the
main Warners label discarded her following the WRECKING BALL album.
Label "branding" is a fascinating concept... but it's really drifting
here, isn't it?
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keesan
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response 51 of 165:
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Apr 24 18:59 UTC 2002 |
I thought Nonesuch was mostly folk, not classical.
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krj
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response 52 of 165:
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Apr 24 20:43 UTC 2002 |
Nonesuch did a lot of folk music of other cultures under their
"Explorer" series -- what would be called World Music today, though
that term was many years in the future -- but classical music
was why they were founded. See the many obituaries for
Teresa Sterne, the record executive who built the label, which
turn up on Google under "nonesuch records teresa sterne".
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mcnally
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response 53 of 165:
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Apr 24 21:03 UTC 2002 |
re #50: Wow.. I simply can't imagine dumping Emmylou right after
"Wrecking Ball." Not only was it a terrific album but it was a
great critical success and has to have been her best seller in years..
Truly the record industry makes no sense to me..
Regarding Wilco, I was listening to NPR on the way back from a very
nice day hike in the Cascades yesterday and they had an interview with
Jeff Tweedy. I was struck by a couple of thoughts on the matter..
a) If I were a really cynical schemer, the kind who no doubt
thrives in the music industry, what could be a better way
to get lots of free publicity and scads of indie cred for
an artist I managed than to arrange for them to be dropped
by the big bad evil oppressive record company and have them
be picked up by the true-to-artistic-vision risk-taking
prestige label, especially when both are exactly the same
company?
I actually doubt that the decision was as calculated as all
that but it does seem to work out well both for Wilco *and*
for Warner. Even if this particular instance wasn't planned
from the get-go, it wouldn't surprise me if someone eventually
pulls a similar trick, especially if sales of "Yankee Hotel
Foxtrot" are at all good..
b) Either Jeff Tweedy has sinister hypnotic control over record
critics or he has the best publicist in the music world.
Every time I read an article or a review about one of his
albums it's filled with comparisons that make me want to rush
out and buy it and every time I actually sit down and listen
to a Wilco or Uncle Tupelo album I wind up losing interest
and turning it off before it's even halfway done. What am I
missing here?
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krj
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response 54 of 165:
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Apr 25 04:12 UTC 2002 |
I can't help with (b); I kinda liked Uncle Tupelo but have never warmed
to Wilco, and after their first collaboration with Billy Bragg I
gave up completely. I sort of liked Son Volt better (the other
descendant band from Uncle Tupelo) but I eventually lost track
of them too.
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gull
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response 55 of 165:
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Apr 25 13:45 UTC 2002 |
Re #53: I know what you mean. The snippets of Wilco's stuff I've heard
remind me a little of Guided By Voices' early albums, but it doesn't
hook me in the same way.
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polygon
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response 56 of 165:
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Apr 25 16:02 UTC 2002 |
Too many "Uncle" bands: Uncle Banzai, Uncle Gizmo, Uncle Tupelo ...
I no longer remember which is which.
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brighn
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response 57 of 165:
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Apr 25 17:06 UTC 2002 |
So you're saying Uncle?
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orinoco
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response 58 of 165:
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Apr 25 17:20 UTC 2002 |
Uncle Tupelo started out as alt-country and kinda drifted. The other two,
uh, didn't. Unless Uncle Gizmo isn't who I think they are, in which case all
bets are off.
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krj
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response 59 of 165:
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Apr 25 19:26 UTC 2002 |
resp:56 :: You forgot Bob's Your Uncle, a late-1980s band from Vancouver.
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mcnally
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response 60 of 165:
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Apr 25 19:55 UTC 2002 |
Let's not forget U.N.K.L.E.
(Actually, doing an All Music Guide search on artist names starting with
"uncle" reveals more than fifty results, 90% of whom I've never heard of..)
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brighn
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response 61 of 165:
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Apr 25 20:22 UTC 2002 |
Detroit's own Uncle Kracker (Kid Rock's DJ, also has a solo CD)
|
oval
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response 62 of 165:
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Apr 25 20:57 UTC 2002 |
U.N.K.L.E. IS GOOD.
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