Tag: music business
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Monday Musing: Art, Folk, Pop And The Taxonomy Of Musical Culture
There’s a broad classification of musical types that has some common currency, in artistic, marketing and academic circles. I want to briefly consider what it is, where it draws the lines between musics, whether it holds water, and what use it might be to those of us that think about…
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Saturday Summary 019
The big news this week is Spotify’s North American launch, but there’s really nothing to say about that so far. It will have some kind of an impact, but exactly how much of one remains to be seen. I don’t know what the end user deal looks like at launch,…
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Monday Musings: Music, Politics, Subculture and Resistance
My thinking in various areas has been converging in recent months. For a while this weekly series of essays was alternating between pieces on the music industry, and pieces on music criticism: it’s getting steadily harder for me to maintain that distinction. For one thing, my valuations of music are…
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Saturday Summary 018
A few scattered shots in the long range artillery duel over free music this week, but nothing dramatic. Lots of interesting articles though, on various topics. http://dj.dancecult.net/index.php/journal/article/view/81/134 This is a really interesting and in depth article on the role of militarist imagery in industrial music, but its observations are clearly…
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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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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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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’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: 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
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Monday Musings: Exciting Times In Music & The Week’s News Roundup
It’s definitely an exciting time to be active in music, for a host of reasons. The industry is in flux, and it’s fascinating to watch its convulsions as the market works out what sort of distribution mechanisms it’s going to support. There are new technologies for musicians springing up on…
Oliver Arditi 