we learn

we make

we sell

and so it goes on

its called progress

in the 70s and 80s they where discovering and making new things bet that shocked older generations

Can anyone here explain to me this shitty post?

The concept of the album was dead already. You can blame the music labels for that!
The iPod will save the concept of the album, by pushing the music industry to discard its favorite model: put a popular song, maybe two on a CD full of trash.

i’d like to offer a (tangential) perspective as someone with experience in the industry..

radio is uniform because it HAS to be – it can’t possibly cater to the niche markets that the ipod has helped foster. quality and talent haven’t changed (there’s *always* a talented artist biting at the bit, fighting to get his/her chance), but the discoverability of talent has.

huge leaps have been made in recent years to allow anyone with a computer and a microphone to produce music on the level of a good studio in the 90s. while empowering, it has also lowered the ‘barrier for entry’, leading to a snowballing glut of poor-quality music. in the past, you couldn’t get a record deal unless certain standards of quality were met, according to the label; now anyone can throw up their homemade tunes on myspace or itunes.

with the proliferation of digital services, labels’ function as a distribution mechanism is largely irrelevant.. out of necessity, they are exclusively focusing on fulfilling their marketing function as a ‘quality filter’, to help people wade through the muck. more interestingly, this role is also being assumed by the various enthusiast communities themselves – check out any number of very genre-specific bulletin boards, and you’ll find great music quite easily.

the net effect of all this?

sure, you’re seeing fewer quality acts making it to the Big Stage (i.e., generating mass appeal). however, it’s much easier for the smaller quality acts to make it within their communities (i.e., mass appeal may no longer be relevant).

in short, the ‘digital revolution’ is evening out the old “5% of artists make 95% of the revenue” model… and i would contend that this is better for everyone in the long run.

“Parents reinforce the throw-away society”

Everyone talks about how technology is throwing away society when we forget who has the power to regulate it: Parents.

Children cannot go and buy this $250-350 iPod, but the parents who stick they’re kid in daycare in front of a TV, a gaming system, and buy them an iPod to go along with it should take some responsibility. But it seems no parent wants to do that anymore. The reason why children of the 50′s 60′s and 70′s appreciated what they had is because they had parents from the 30′s and 40′s come from nothing teach them about value. So they were taught the value of knowing what they had, while not actually having it. Now its time for the baby boomer’s to get theirs: the car they always wanted the 4500 sq ft house, the 60″ plasma TV. More this, bigger that. And the cycle of “wants” and “must haves” and “the world owe me’s” continues… I guess we can say “we are what we reinforce”.

Whole albums will survive only in cases where this format is truly justified — if there’s a theme, concept or story. (Maybe a playlist would accompany the collection of tracks.) 99% of “albums” sold in record stores do not meet this criterion, but the 1% that do will remain albums.

I remember when my uncle got me and my brother a Nintendo for Christmas one year. This is just something that my dad could not understand. He just kept asking questions like “What is the point of this?”, “What do you benefit from this?”, and “Quit playing that @%&$# game and go outside!”

In my generation video games are perfectly acceptable, but his generation didn’t understand them.

No one says anyone has to agree with me. I’m just sharing my point of view.

Thanks for elaborating on the “attention-deficit” angle. I touched on it and am thinking of writing a wider article on the subject sometime soon. I believe you are right. The over-stimulation technology can provide must impact on the other parts of peoples’ lives. Remember when you had to dial-up to access the internet? I had a 9600 baud modem the first time I connected. As I said at the start of this article, we used to have time to do things. Now broadband internet is so fast, you have to have multi-tabbed browsers to allow you to access even more sites at the same time. I think it breeds impatience.

Glad you like the blog and thanks for the great comment.

I agree that “we” are in a downward spiral of a throwaway society. I believe that IPODs, music downloads, youtube, myspace, and the down fall of complete music albums are just the products of a technology induced attention-deficit disorder. I think technology causes attention-deficit disorder or some variation of it. I think our brains get “information highs” from the massive amounts of stimulation we are getting from IPODs,computers,video games,tv, ect. so that when we are not “hooked-up” to technology we experience attention-deficit disorder symptoms because our brains are searching for the same high level of stimulation we are getting from technology.

Anyone follow me here?

As for Nickelback, not sure if you’ve heard this – but you should – it’s classic stuff:
http://www.thewebshite.net/nickelback.htm