Spotify « Knox Road

[Hype Hype Hooray] Pandora v. Music or How Artists Can Beat The Industry

Hype Hype Hooray is a biweekly “critique” of the music scene and the blogosphere that feeds it, told through the lens of Jamie Hale, a journalist who likes music about as much as he likes scotch and a firm leather chair. Please enjoy with a grain of salt.

Portland music writer Robert Ham wasn’t happy Wednesday morning. “If I don’t start seeing more musicians freaking the fuck out about this Pandora news, I’m going to be incredibly disappointed,” he Tweeted. “I can’t figure out why they feel that paying musicians/artists LESS money makes the most sense. Fucking bullshit.”

Easy, Bob.

That “bullshit” Pandora news to which he was referring was a federal court decision handed down Wednesday that prohibits musicians and their publishers from making licensing deals with music streaming services, like Pandora, if they’re already members of a licensing fee collecting society, like the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP).

Recently a few major labels had decided to try to negotiate separate licensing deals for some of their music on Pandora, all of which had an established licensing deal through ASCAP. The court saw those separate deals as problematic.

This effectively allows Pandora to bypass, by law, record label negotiations that could, theoretically, grant artists more money in licensing fees.

While there are plenty of valid arguments to be made here, like the fact that Pandora executives and shareholders probably don’t NEED any more money, while many musicians barely make enough money to LIVE as it is, the real debate is about what musicians should actually DO about it.

As is the case in so many times of crisis, we turn to Thom Yorke.

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Jamie

[Hype Hype Hooray] The Addict is Back

Note: About a year ago I wrote a column highlighting my addiction to procuring and listening to new music. After my external hard drive crashed, I reevaluated my life and took a much-needed sabbatical. But after recently giving in to Spotify, I have felt the monster of addiction return, like a cold, dark moon creeping over the horizon. The following was written in the midst of a recent all-day Spotify binge.

I feel it all I feel it all I feel it all sings Feist so sweetly into the chasm inside my head, so deep and empty and space so much empty space such a vast endless void for it all for me to take it all in. I search and navigate and discover and gasp and save it as a playlist always save it as a playlist making playlists from my playlists playing lists of all my playlists, and then there’s friends’ lists and critics’ lists and musicians’ lists too many lists and I can’t help myself can’t help myself but to feel it all and feel it all and hear it all and feel it all.

Chromatics take me into the black. Crystal Castles give me the plague. Flaming Lips show me the terror. Jagwar Ma has me howlin’. The Nighttime Adventure Society brings the doctor. Kendrick Lamar kills my vibe. Alt-J dissolves me. Wampire pulls up in the hearse. Modest Mouse buries me with it. King Tuff is dancing on my grave. Michael Kiwanuka takes me home again where my eyes flutter open to the dawn of a new day another chance to immerse my tender mind in the cluttered infinity of the world of music day after day all over again.

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Jamie

[Hype Hype Hooray] Spotify, You Beautiful Wench

I was somewhere in the woods of southwest Washington, hiking a well-worn trail on a cool spring day. My iPod sat in my back pocket, headphones nestled into my ears, pumping the sweet sound of Foxygen to my brain. It was somewhere during their acclaimed single “Shuggie,” in the middle of one of the song’s sudden breakaway bridges, that the feeling overcame me. I was in love, I realized–in love with Spotify.

I hadn’t known the app long. I was in the midst of its two-day trial, a coy courtship meant to lead to a monthly subscription of their premium service. With the trial I got all the perks a premium user gets: instant streaming of almost any album ever made, ability to craft custom playlists, and the oh-so-important offline feature.

I took a break on a log, turned on alt-J’s “An Awesome Wave,” and sighed.

Back in high school, after MP3s swiftly subjugated the reign of CDs, I used to tell my friends “Just wait, something will come by someday and make MP3s obsolete.” They would scoff and say “Sure, but what could possibly be better than a digital music file?” nearly a decade later we have the answer: limitless streaming.

It’s pretty amazing when you take a step back and look at the bigger picture. We can now, at the touch of a screen, listen to almost any album ever made. The original iPods, which required the external purchase of music, are now nothing more than mausoleums for our dated goods. Who needs to acquire music when we can just have access to it all?

Spotify isn’t inventing the wheel here, it’s simply taking advantage of the inevitable change in technology and marketing it better than anyone else. And, oh, does it market it well.

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