New Sound Now // An online music show and blog

I happened across this Digg story the other day and had to ponder its actual meaning. Simply, this guys’ laptop was stolen. In most occurrences like this, that would be the last he would ever see of it. But it isn’t. He’s getting a sort of echo, a ghost-like breadcrumb trail, courtesy of last.fm.

Last.fm is a music aggregator that acts as a social barometer for what people are listening to at any given time, as well as over long periods of time. You install it and forget about it, and after a while, it has an entire file ready for you, charting your musical interests and tastes and displaying them to the world. Juan Carlos, the victim, noticed that even though his laptop was gone, his last.fm profile kept updating – this time with the thieves’ music collection. In a bit of poetic irony, the thief has much less popular taste in tunes, angering Juan’s friends enough to post spiteful remarks.

This tether that Juan and his thief share is interesting but also sad: Its unfortunate that last.fm can’t GPS the location of the updates, or else poor Juan might have a chance of getting his hardware back. However, although Juan’s last.fm profile is a string to his lost merchandise that can’t be pulled, and it’s a string that has gone seemingly unnoticed by the thief (for a year!) Maybe someday in the near future that will be enough to find it.

As well, one has to touch on the fact that a music aggregator is the tie, and not something else. For the first time (that I’m aware of, at least), a thief and a victim are connected by a live stream of digital music. Unlike when someone steals an ipod, this trail isn’t really noticeable by the thief, and could be there permanently. As well, most ipod thefts (as well as laptops, for that matter) are more often than not about reselling the item on the black market, not personal use. It’s literally the case of one music fan (enough to download last.fm) being victimized by another (since he hasn’t wiped the hard drive, he’s likely using it himself, which means he’s using it at least partially to enjoy music, regardless of it’s subjective quality). Hopefully there’ll be an update to this story.

update

I meant to give everyone links to the stuff I talked about on the show, so here they are. Expect this list underneath every episode from here on:

Free music by bands:
Cassettes Won’t Listen
Okkervil River

Free music at record labels:
The Creamery
001 Collective

News:
Antigua wins ability to copyright U.S. products

MIA’s censored videos
MIA’s uncensored video

Videos:
The Kills - R U A Fever
The Raveonettes - Dead Sound
The Fiery Furnaces - Duplexes of the Dead
The Kooks - Black Cab Sessions

Op-ed:
David Byrne’s survival strategies for new artists

10. Feist - The Reminder

Feist deserves the opening spot on this list for legitimizing indie music in the hearts, minds, and wallets of the mainstream listener. She was played relentlessly on the radio, seen in commercials for the ubiquitous ipod nano, and host of two incredibly entertaining videos on late night cable shows. This is all indicative of a great performer and character, and it almost overshadows the record itself, which is in every way a superior effort over Let It Die, both in terms of pop-infused singles, and intimate moments of introspection.

9. Bright Eyes - Cassadaga

Largely forgotten due to it’s February release and country tinge, Cassadaga is the furthest leap Conor Oberst has ever taken in his career, both in terms of musical definition and public image. 2007 was the year that Bright Eyes stopped being the poster boy of emo underground (though one could say that label was withering with the last pair of releases, Digital Ash/It’s Morning) and became something that few people saw coming: a full-fledged country music star. Cassadaga is the most listenable album in his collection, containing almost no misses. Critics claimed the record was too mainstream, too accessible, but Cassadaga is a pop country album, and these kinds of things should be accessible. On top of this, “I Must Belong Somewhere” is one of the best songs of the year, and the commissioned art video that accompanied it will bring hugs and tears to people who don’t even like the band.

8. Rilo Kiley - Under the Blacklight

Almost universally panned as being several steps backward, Under The Blacklight was another record swept under the rug this year. I planned on doing the same, except a strange thing happened: I couldn’t stop listening to it. It’s still the album I put on when I can’t find anything else. It’s become my go-to for reading, and it’s the de-facto soundtrack to my next book. It’s as good as any Fleetwood Mac wannabe band will ever get, and “15” is still one of my favorite guilty pleasures.

7. Kevin Drew - Broken Social Scene presents Spirit If…

I have no idea if Americans have even heard this album, but it doesn’t matter, as Spirit If… works just as well as an idea as it does a physical being. Basically, Kevin Drew put together most of the Broken Social Scene crew (which I believe consists of the entire population of Ontario. I might be on this record for all I know) but steered it in his own personal direction, which somehow warrants it as a solo record. Fine, whatever. It’s a Broken Social Scene record with a different name. It’s more or less a slightly less bombastic and better lyricized version of the BSS record from last year.

6. Animal Collective - Strawberry Jam

Animal Collective succeeded this year in doing the one thing that most bands simply cannot achieve: make a record so sonically complicated that it becomes nearly impossible to criticize while at the same time making it easy to listen to. Does that make it a great record by itself? Not in the least, but it turns out to be incredibly addictive anyway.

5. Bjork - Volta

Any year Bjork releases a record is one she appears on this list. Any year she releases a record full of actual songs that can be heard without a decoder ring, she ranks higher. Volta is a pressure cooker of a record, one that reveals itself full after repeat listens but doesn’t actually piss anybody off on the first go around, which actually might be a first for her.

4. Tegan & Sara - The Con

Another album filled with far more propulsion than its predecessor, The Con was Tegan & Sara’s heaviest record, and while maybe not as good all around as So Jealous, it definitely serves a better purpose. What The Con says about the band more than anything is that they have more venom in them than we knew, more fuel, and more drive to keep going after their hearts have been broken and their spirits split in twain. It’s a giant middle finger record that can be studied in various ways, but it’s also a straight ahead rock set from a band known for more optimistic fare.

3. Stars - In our Bedroom after the war

The last Canadian band on my list is the one I hold closest to me. For years now, Stars have been the cornerstone of my playlists. Rarely do I make a mix CD without one of their songs attached. In Our Bedroom After The War gave me thirteen new gifts to give to people I love. It’s a smaller sound than Stars’ last effort, but it’s meant to chronicle a feeling that’s smaller than lighting oneself on fire. It’s meant to display one’s feeling after the worst is over, even if there’s nothing left to hold onto. That’s a very difficult thesis for a pop band, but Stars pulls it off almost effortlessly.

2. MIA - Kala

Rolling Stone’s number 1 record of the year. I was a little surprised they didn’t give it to the Foo Fighters, but whatever. Kala has so many things going for it: A great origin story about MIA being rejected from the US due to passport issues, a censored video by MTV, a fantastic video done in Africa for Bird Flu, and a general sense that this album is going to change things for hip hop, pop, and rock music in the world. Perhaps it’s the threat of globalization looming over everyone’s head, but Kala was just so damn refreshing in so many ways. It made every other record that came near it sound like it was recorded two decades before.

1. Tullycraft - Every Scene Needs It’s Center

Sometimes, you’ll hear a song on the radio and it’ll stick in your head for weeks before looking it up. That’s what happened when I first heard “Pop songs your new boyfriend is too stupid to know about,” a song that isn’t on this record. Still, it made me look up Tullycraft. I’m really glad I did. Every Scene Needs It’s Center starts off with the most iconic song of the year in my opinion: “The Punks Are Writing Love Songs.” The entire album is a sarcastic response to the hipster posturing that ran rampant in 2007, all performed under the guise of candy pop. This sort of clever lyricism is a sadly missed art form. It’s a great record to do absolutely anything to, and it succeeds on every single level.

There is a severe nostalgic quality to mixtapes, especially among us who made dozens (or hundreds) over the years. The aesthetic feel to them conjures of incredible memories for me. It’s the same way people talk about vinyl, really. The feel of a blank tape with barely-legible writing all over it represented more than a few hours of musical syncing and thought; it represented a time when giving someone else a set of songs wasn’t considered illegal file sharing, it was simply sharing. Simpler times.

Mix CD’s came along and, while allowing everyone with a computer the ability to play 1-hour DJ, never stole the glory of the tape. Again, like vinyl, the cassette had melted its logo into our subconscious, echoing an image of the personal soundtrack that only the ipod has had the ability to infiltrate. As well, I think people were always a little suspicious of CDs. Whereas with vinyl and cassettes, you can see the physical evidence of the music, either in the groove or the ribbon, the CD hid its visual proof in a way the average listener couldn’t properly explain to a five-year old.

So with that, what are we to make of this admittantly sexy little gift idea, the USB mixtape? It appears to fuse the recent past nostalgia we all still linger for in the form of its casing - a retro-looking mixtape cover, complete with side A labelling and lines for track listings - with the technology of the recent present - a 64mb USB key, which allows the user to upload about an hours’ worth of tunes. While the average listener can’t explain the way a USB key works any better than a compact disc, at least they don’t have to worry about the USB key playing music by itself. It needs a computer to do that, and that’s obviously the point. Since people don’t really listen to CDs anymore, what’s the point of making a mix CD, when they’re only going to have to insert the disc into their computer, rename all the files themselves, then sync it with their mp3 player. The USB key circumvents this, removing two of those steps.

In a way, the USB stick is really the successor of the mix tape anyway. It is essentially a permanently refillable vessel (okay, so blank tapes could only be refilled so many times before the ribbon wore out), stamped only with labeling and (preferably) love. So the Mix tape USB drive makes ample loads of sense, and I’m sure would be appreciated by any audiophile’s significant other out there.

The downside, as with all new tech, is price. At 20 pounds (roughly $30-35 Canadian, or $300 American) plus shipping, it’s hardly the proper replacement for the $2.00 blank tape. Another downside is that this item signifies the death of the mix tape in a way that CDs never did. This product literally points out that mix tapes are obsolete, because the USB stick does absolutely everything the tape did, and it does it in a way that’s compatible with the digital music we’ve all accepted.

It’s a really cool item, but it’s also something to think about.

I’m not partial to the spelling of the song, but I’m a huge fan of the video. This is the first video in our featured-video series, which will make a huge portion of the show. Enjoy.

I was beginning to wonder when someone would nail a letter to a door, officially declaring file sharing a revolution in music. Instead of a door, they’ve used a website, which is apt, I suppose, but a tad common, no? In any case, there is now a Declaration of Independence for independent, open source, free(ish) music, written by the 001collective, a label-ish kind of entity that promotes freedom and sharing as a way to generate record sales and advertising (amongst other things).

While in absolutely no means perfect (misspelling of “Distrobution” notwithstanding), this page denotes some fairly obvious points about the last few years:

“Twenty dollars for a CD, or a movie? Very little of this goes to the actual artist; most goes towards a bloated industry to pay for the massive manpower involved in such products. That was the old world, when it was impossible for an artist to have mass public consumption of their work without significant money and effort. But this is the new world. Through the internet an artist can reach millions of people. And through the internet the people can find obscure artists and download anything they want for free.”

This sort of flag-waving revolution-speak is interesting to hear in regards to music. Surely, the public has already spoken on this issue; we generally like free things, and are not as likely to pay for something when it’s available to us from easier transactions. This promptly raises the question, as it always has, of how the musicians (not to mention everyone else) will be paid. Apparently the process that leads to this solution is to remove the head of the CEO of every major record label.

This sort of “revolution” talk comes interestingly, albiet coincidentally, with one 50 Cent’s recent claim that, in regards to file sharing, “What is important for the music industry to understand is that this really doesn’t hurt the artists.” He goes on to point out that concerts are still selling out and merchandise is still a great source of income, and that these sort of things need to be capitalized.

The backbone argument for the RIAA and every other group that discriminates against file sharing (to the point of suing citizens) is that file sharing hurts the artists. While I’m not arguing with them (because that’s a much, much larger argument), the fact that there’s a collective (label) championing independent, free digital music, as well as a multi-million dollar mega-star hip-hop artist letting us know that he’s fine with file sharing (to a point) is definitely worthy of note.

Ever since the broken and corrupt pop music industry was spiritually torn apart by the onslaught of piracy at the turn of the century, a new “solution” for the concern of artists getting paid for their work has appeared exactly every seven seconds. This wouldn’t be a problem so much if the advent of blogging hadn’t incurred, rendering would-be journalists into benign conduits of overtly enthusiastic information. Because of this, every new idea in regards to halting piracy gets heralded by someone, somewhere, as the future of the industry and the immediate end to all our woes.

(Who’s woes exactly?)

I heard about Tunesquare the other day, and while it certainly holds no promise of ever gaining ground, it at least prompts a moment to ascertain the situation that has allowed it to germinate. Tunesquare seems to believe that Times Square would be a nice motif for a website, so it is adorned with dozens of unrelated ads in a way that makes it look like a street tunneling through the internet. It’s tag line is initially enticing – absolutely free music for streaming, embedding and downloading (DRM-free) that actually pays the artists who decide to upload their material.

Where this breaks apart is in the ads themselves, and the philosophy that drives them: people aren’t paying for music, but maybe they’ll sustain an onslaught of corporate advertising in order to get it for free (which they are already doing). Tunesquare certainly isn’t the first website to think that this is a pretty good business model: AOL, Yahoo, and various other websites remind you of new flavours of Doritos while allowing you to access mp3s. At least those sites offer bona fide stars to tag along with the corporate candy.

Tunesquare’s got the same business model as every other post-Napster “solution”: if customers won’t pay for music, how else can we make money? It’s not an ignoble question, but the only way this industry will ever be fixed (if it’s in fact broken–it naturally requires a certain point of view to go in either direction) is if something comes along that astonishes and omits the very point of piracy. This, as opposed to revenue quandaries like the one Timesquare seeks to answer, is a substantially more difficult question.

While nobody can argue that someday there will be something to unseat the ipod as the champion of portable digital music, I can’t imagine anyone would have suggested that the Zune would even be a competitor.

I’m not talking about the new & improved Zunes, either. Those are sleek, artsy, and have a whiff of sophistication that may attract some genuine purchases. I’m talking about the brown and black door-stop that was released a year ago. You know, the one that nobody bought.

Well, in order to get rid of them, Microsoft decided to put them on sale at various places in the US for $70, which made it by far the cheapest 30gig video/mp3 player on the market. It was still the ugliest, but that didn’t seem to deter the people who made it the number one device on Amazon for a little while. Still, it’s hardly unseating the ipod in terms of overall sales and influence, right? One can argue that sales doesn’t matter in the realm of the music industry. Those that would argue this way may claim that to be rock n roll, you have to do rock n roll things. While discounting an ugly media player is hardly what any philistine may call punk rock, it has fueled a slight attitude boost in one Wired writer:

I haven’t felt like this much of rebel since I was one-third of the audience for Black Flag’s first Arizona performance. Makes me want create an outsider art T-shirt with the legend: “Screw you! I’m listening to my Zune!” Why, it almost makes me want to remove the black protective case that hides my Zune’s raging brownness.

What makes this interesting is that this is not the kind of attitude that the first ipod owners probably felt. Buying an ipod never came with the feeling of rebellion; rather, it came with the feeling of superiority – a feeling quickly evaporating with every new asshole who buys one.

It’s not a major story and not likely to be a great trend, but I’m forced to pause now after talking to my girlfriend about my upcoming ipod touch purchase and her outright mockery of me for it, and after this article, and wonder if things are changing again.

From Zune Arts  

This is one of over a dozen new snippet ads for the Microsoft Zune, featuring the incomperable M. Ward and put together by the art collective SSSR. As an ad, it does what all good salesmen do; it slyly implies features of the product by comparing it to something amazing, in this particular case by an “infinity” cookie that never depletes no matter how many times it’s shared (done to highlight the sharing feature of the Zune). It’s cute, warms the heart, and only mentions the actual product in the last 4 seconds. Much like the Sony Bravia ads, the ad is less about the product and more about the production value of the short.

It also naturally begs the question; is this art, or is it an advertisement? Can something be both? Does art require itself to be in and of itself, or can it promote something else, especially if that something else is decidedly less artistic (being a mass-marketed product and all)? 

I think that when it comes to things like this, I can actually overlook the ad at the tail end of the piece and enjoy it based on its novelty as a cute, singular short film. I suggest clicking on the link above and checking out the other ads; all of them are animated in wonderful and unique ways, and you’re only reminded of the fact that it’s a big ploy by a billion dollar mega-company during the conclusions. It also helps that the artists (both visual and musical) are highlighted with biographies, interviews, and links to their own work, which means you won’t be scratching your head wondering who was singing when the two snakes are eating ice cream.

New Sound Now is going to be a show broadcast weekly on the web. It’s also a place to find great new music, new ways of listening and finding music, and new ways of thinking about music. It’s going to be co-produced by Gredunza Press, an independent press from Toronto, and Broken Dial, an indie music blog from New York. It’s going to be a lot of fun.