Category: Music news and opinion
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Saturday Summary 017
This week, Myspace gets humiliated again, and lots of people have thoughts about new models for the music business. http://blancomusic.wordpress.com/2011/02/03/whats-all-this-about-spotify-again/ An enlightening perspective from an independent label on Spotify’s business practices. While there is an undeniable parallel with radio, and presence on streaming services may be of real promotional value…
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Monday Musings: Technique and Creativity
There are some really skilled musicians around with very little to say: there are also some players with a very rudimentary technique who are able to stretch it into work of huge creative ambition. There are many more whose artistic strategies are too dependent on their technical aptitude to permit…
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Saturday Summary 016
I’m not detecting any special, industry shaking trends this week (which doesn’t mean they’re not there, I’m usually the last to know!) However, I have found a fair few interesting links I’d like to share with you.
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Monday Musings: Aesthetics And Meanings, Or How To Value Any Sound
Looking back at the variety of reviews I’ve written in the past few months, variety is the principal thing that strikes me. There are stylistic tendencies, but they have come about through natural enough processes, such as artists who know one another sending me their music to review: as far…
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Saturday Summary 015
Freemium, and streaming models that offer entirely chimerical value are struggling this week. Which is nice. Pointless middlemen are finding it harder to get by in a market where they can no longer control access, and where ideological control structures are slipping away (or are starting to reflect a reshaped…
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Monday Musings: What Do Musicians Mean, And Does It Matter?
Music fans very often want to know something about the author of their favourite sounds. It is a widespread assumption that details of an artist’s biography or personality can provide an insight into their art: while this may or may not be the case, it is undeniable that the idea…
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Saturday Summary 014
This is my first separate weekly post of links and news: it’s number 14 because there were thirteen earlier posts that were joined on to my series of pompous essays (still known as Monday Musings).
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Monday Musings: Canons and Mainstreams
How often does someone say ‘you must listen to/ read/ watch cultural artifact X’? How often is it assumed that you are familiar with a particular album, or does someone express shock that you are unfamiliar with another? This week’s topic concerns the cultural canon, and the idea of a…
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Monday Musings: What’s So Good About Music?
I’ve been thinking back recently to my abortive attempt to train as a secondary school music teacher, and the furious bout of self-examination it induced. The process, which was not a positive one, but from which I learned a great deal, forced me to question, and explicitly articulate the value…
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Monday Musings: Advice For Bands – How To Annoy Me And Lose My Interest
I write this blog; I also write reviews for two excellent websites, the music magazine eBurban and very wonderful independent bands’ resource Live Unsigned. Doing these things requires me to find out about various bands and musicians, listen to their music, get a handle on where they’re coming from, and communicate…
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Monday Musings: What’s The Use Of Critical Theory?
I pay a certain amount of attention to critical theory, which is to say, I think about the ins and outs of what I do, as someone who makes statements in one medium that are responses to someone else’s statements in another. I also mean that I read what some…
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Monday Musings: Information Wants To Be Free, or How Do You Own A Sound?
There’s a lot of thought being given, in all quarters, to how to turn music into money in the unprecedented circumstances in which we find ourselves. What is music worth? What is it about music that is tradeable? What parts of the traditional commercial landscape are worth defending? To what…
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Monday Musings: Is The Meaning In The Lyrics Or The Music? and my weekly news roundup
A few of the recordings I’ve reviewed lately have challenged me to think about the relationship between words and music, and the location of meanings in vocal songs. I’ve never shied away from discussing music with a lyric in a language I don’t understand, but I’m always aware that I’m…
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Monday Musings: My Report And Frothing Rant From MusicConnex
I was lucky enough to spend three days of late April representing the fantastic DIY musicians’ resource Live Unsigned at the MusicConnexconference in central London. This was an event targeted primarily towards musical artists seeking to develop their careers through the use of digital resources
Oliver Arditi 