Madonna signing her Tidal "contract" with one leg up on the table. What is it with her where she

[Billy Goat Sverige]

thinks all the bizarre ****e she does is cool and quirky? Good to see Jay Z trying desperately to become a billionaire like Dre :****er:

http://cdn02.cdn.justjared.com/wp-content/uploads/headlines/2015/03/madonna-signed-the-tidal-declaration-like-this.jpg

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-3018528/RIP-Spo tify-Jay-Z-recruits-host-celeb-pals-including-Rihanna-Madonn a-Kanye-launch-new-streaming-service.html (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-3018528/RIP-Spotify-Jay-Z-recruits-host-celeb-pals-including-Rihanna-Madonna-Kanye-launch-new-streaming-service.html)

[Sir Charlie of Nicholas]

We've all got to earn a living.

[Billy Goat Sverige]

drive-by shootings.

[Classic Jorge]

I mean, the Abramovic/Usmanov way? Not for me, Clive.

Steve Jobs I like, Dre I like.

[Classic Jorge]

The rap game's changed. It used to be all about the rims, the hoes and the AKs.

I blame Puffy

[Steve Williams - gay for Mark Knopfler]

Free is the way forward.

[Sir Charlie of Nicholas]

I know of Madonna, of course. In fact, I was driving round Parliament Square recently when I had a vivid flashback to doing the same thing the first time I heard 'Crazy For You' come on the radio.

So that would be 1985 :-(

[Billy Goat Sverige]

pay 10 quid extra a month for something because the sound quality is better.

[Sir Charlie of Nicholas]

will miss out on the great new artists who excited us so much when we were growing up.

Still, everything must come to an end, I suppose. I guess popular music has just bumped up firmly against humanity's greed, and lost.

[Steve Williams - gay for Mark Knopfler]

[Steve Williams - gay for Mark Knopfler]

Be that through radio or purchasing music or downloading music etc.

[Berni]

They seem to see music as something to be consumed at whim rather than as a thing to buy into (which was what the album forced us to do). In many ways, I think it might be more sensible.

[Classic Jorge]

odd strategy using a bunch of multi-millionaires to advertise a premium service with a massively limited back cataloge that doesn't even have early arrival market share.

[Classic Jorge]

I couldn't imagine many of my metal friends would've appreciated me switching off Slayer and whacking some NWA on back in the day, likewise my hip-hop friends.











NB Slayer are ****

[Sir Charlie of Nicholas]

There might be some **** made in someone's bedroom, I suppose. But record comapnies aren't going to invest to nurture the best young talent if they're not going to make a return.

[Billy Goat Sverige]

anything on Spotify but has signed up to this Tidal thing is Taylor Swift.

I'd wager that none of them will remove their stuff from Spotify either, given that they'll be losing money (however little they claim it to be).

[Berni]

Jones as much as I did Bob Dylan or The Smiths. My 16-year-old has no such qualms.

[Classic Jorge]

Of course, the long hair and combat boots were a bit of a giveaway but there you go

[Classic Jorge]

See also The Sun and The Times

[Berni]

bands are now making much of their money and getting known.

In fact, music is just reverting to how it was before the recording bubble came about.

[Steve Williams - gay for Mark Knopfler]

[Steve Williams - gay for Mark Knopfler]

Home taping killed nothing after all, this is no different.

[Billy Goat Sverige]

exclusively on it, but the back catalogues are all still on Spotify. And let's be honest, if i'm listening to anything Jay Z it won't be any of the new ****e.

[Classic Jorge]

What was that, 2003?

[IUFG]

https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpf1/v/t1.0-9/10957145_10155327854245322_60497344225297791_n.jpg ?oh=d580035364cec9ae7ad25352fc1cc9a7&oe=55B695F5&__gda__=1433477791_8dda1f4a5c28b55b41e59c193344e5e 4

[Sir Charlie of Nicholas]

However, when I hear people who claim to be music enthusiasts boast of how they 'never' pay for anything any more, I am concerned and confused. These people are so mad keen on music they can't bring themselves to part with a few quid to keep the whole thing happening?

It's the same with movies, of course.

A sad indictment of our times. Rank greed, arrogance and hyposcrisy. Apologists for theft. And all, amusingly, ultimately self-defeating.

[Billy Goat Sverige]

is crap.

[Ashberto]

It's music, Jim. But not as we know it.

This is nothing like the old home taping. In those days people would buy what they could and top up on tapes, which everyone knew were ****. There was no sense that all music should be free.

[Ashberto]

and lasts a few minutes. Yet they won't spend 50p on a piece of music that costs hundreds of pounds and years of practice to make, and lasts a lifetime.

I despair at the sickening greed. :-( These are the people who would, in the past, happily use and trade slaves.

[Classic Jorge]

Face it, Ash, we're all dinosaurs

[Sir Charlie of Nicholas]

I note bgm considers someone who would pay more for better quality reproduction 'a c**t'. I can't get my head around this attitude. Music to us was precious and important - perhaps what is produced today really is just disposable **** and not worth paying for or appreciating in a high quality format?

[Billy Goat Sverige]

being streamed at 320kbs compared to 1411kbs, which is 10 quid more expensive every month.

[Classic Jorge]

[Billy Goat Sverige]

of The Scavengers from the comic books. This is what i've read anyway. I imagine next season will be a lot of Rick convincing Morgan the world is a bad place and bad people have to die :-|

[Ashberto]

but in my case, despite apparently committing the crime of being white, which seems to somehow make me some sort of untermensch, I actually understand how this stuff is put together.

Being a snobby music hipster decades before hipsterism became mainstream, I've never had a great deal of love for most commercial music, but the tropes used in contemporary production are the most tedious and moronic cookie-cutter crap in the history of popular music.

This isn't because I am white. It isn't because I think it's noise. I don't hear noise, I hear exactly what is there.

[Sir Charlie of Nicholas]

It's not just being white that makes you scum. You're also male, and rich.

SCUM

[Classic Jorge]

I don't know whether it's my age or my skin colour, or just that I have the vaguest of critical faculties.

The thing that most pisses me off is the use of phrases, hooks, lyrics etc from other songs completely out of context in stuff. Your Farrels and his mates are the worst at this.

I grew up with sampling, I thought Afrika Bambataa was Kraftwerk for far too long, but this new stuff is just theft of the basest fashion.

And that's before we get into the autotune, protools, vocoder stuff.

In short, I'm with you, my honky

[Berni]

what is ultimately some fairly dim chaps banging away at guitars and drums?

[Ashberto]

But yes, seeing as streamed music cuts out 95% of the actual music, and ****ty earbud headphones cut out another 95%, and the original recording was pretty **** in the first place, maybe it is all ultimately worthless anyway.

[Ashberto]

You wondered what sort of c**t gets swayed by a doorstepper and then come out with this?

[Sir Charlie of Nicholas]

I wasn't anyway. Can't speak for you.

Anyway, it's irrelevant. Music WAS that important to us; the reasons are immaterial.

Given your inability to appreciate live music and your penchant for Bragg, I wonder whether you were actually a party to the magic of music touching the juvenile soul. Perhaps you remained more objective.

[Berni]

and you build a successful song out of it in much the same way that you would build a successful car or bicycle. It's an industrial process and always has been. It's just that the parts are more thoroughly tested by time and that the manufacturing techniques are more efficient. Only because we've been conditioned to think that music is somehow 'special' do we describe this efficiency as cynical or calculated.

[Classic Jorge]

Though I do just keep wanting Glen to die already, but they won't as he's basically the biggest US asian TV star going now.

Not sure these guys will be the scavengers, they seem much more calculated to me. Much more like The Saviours.

Not sure if that guy was Negan or not though, he seemed a bit ****

[Billy Goat Sverige]

[Classic Jorge]

[barrybueno]

calmed it down a bit with age.

[Berni]

You can't deny that the tribal thing of liking one type of music or hating another; or of revering 'artists' and their albums were largely manufactured phenomena. It was certainly nothing to do with the quality of the music in many instances. You were being asked to buy into an idea.

This is the only thing that explains The Clash, who were objectively terrible, but were the darlings of a certain section of the music press who - like it or not - dicated tastes and what was considered 'cool'. These people had real influence once upon a time and still affect our generation's concepts of 'good' and 'bad' music today.

[Classic Jorge]

[Berni]

It's a nonsensical, quasi-religious confection we've invented to explain why some people can do something well and others can't.

[Classic Jorge]

I suppose you'll take a nice Jack Vetriano or an IKEA print over a Boticelli or Titian any day, will you?

Art is doing something well and then taking it to a transcendent level beyond, it's a visceral reaction.

[Snin]

[Berni]

anything objectively whatsoever. It doesn't. And the fact that you have to use meaningless terms like 'transcendent' and 'visceral' is proof of what I'm saying about the quasi-religious, spiritual *******s aspect of calling something art. I don't buy it. You can tell me it's neurons, receptors, ganglions, brain chemistry, euphony or a predisposition to symmetry and I'll listen to you, but don't tell it's because it's 'art'.

[Classic Jorge]

Transcendent is apt too, it's there to pinpoint the exact moment goes beyond doing something bloody well and makes it into something that goes above and beyond the craft.

And of course it's thoroughly subjective, you can't measure someone else's gut reaction.

[Berni]

A 'gut reaction' doesn't objectively exist. Neither does that 'transcendent' moment you describe. Or at least, insofar as they do exist, they are not proof of this nebulous term 'art',

That, however, is not to say you can't measure such reactions. Increasingly we can. Increasingly, all those things we thought are special like 'God' and 'love' and 'art' are being revealed to be mundane neuro-chemical processes whereby an external stimulus achieves a certain effect on the brain. One day, someone will be able to give you a pill or a treatment that could stop you liking your favourite music. Why? Because all we are is a collection of chemical reactions and electrical impulses. That's it.

[Classic Jorge]

...is somehow not considered a valid thing?

I don't get it, are you arguing that art doesn't exist? Even though you've just laid out in no uncertain terms that it does exist and what it is.

Or is it that it's simply not able to be measured in profit and loss terms, is that your issue?

[Ashberto]

First, commercial music has always been about formulas. A formula which is proven to work, and that sells a product in sufficient quantities will be used again and again.

In times of surplus, there could be room for a little innovation, but the tighter the margins, the more conservative the forumula, in terms of sticking to whatever worked last time round. Now it is stuck in a rut with all the things we've talked about, and I believe it is the complete lack of surplus, as a result of the whole nobody-buying-recorded-music thing, that has got us here. Musical styles used to constantly evolve and reinvent themselves every few years, but we will soon have atrophied for nearly 20 years, spiralling in ever decreasing circles down the plughole of mediocrity.

The other thing is that many talented people who in the past would have made a determined effort at trying to make a living out of music will obviously not be bothering today, as people refuse to pay for it. There will be some going so far as it is fun to do up to a point, but only up to a point and fun doesn't pay the bills.

Freetarding isn't killing music imo. It's already killed it.

And I'm not saying that there isn't decent music out there in recent times. I like to think that I play some of it, but in a commercial sense, the business is f**ked.


Footnote: Long, long ago the forumula for commercial success was a cracking tune, which is why almost all pop music of all genres in the 60's was so bloody good. Especially when listened to today.

[Berni]

Describing something as 'art' is lazy and exclusive. It's simply putting it behind one wall with everything else on the other side. That is obviously a nonsense because such a judgement is utterly subjective. If you can give me a single valid, objective reason why Jack Vettriano isn't art and Botticelli is, I'll retract my argument.

I'm simply saying that the reaction that causes one individual to call something art can be measured as what it is: a physical reaction based on the particular history and neurology of that individual to certain stimuli. Those stimuli can be distilled, synthesised and used to create the same reaction every time. That's nothing to do with this monolithic thing we call 'art'.

[Ashberto]

But yes, to reduce the whole aesthetic experience of life to numbers in the analogue computer that is the brain and nervous system is effectively to suck the joy out of existence, even if it is ultimately true.

But then, as Berni doesn't really like anything except food, booze and sex we can perhaps understand his cynicism when it comes to art.

[Berni]

Mind you, if that means no more Metal Machine Musics or Trout Mask Replicas, I'd struggle to say that's a bad thing, tbh.

Music has to please its audience straight off the bat now. There's no more room for 'difficult third albums'. You've got to give the public what they want or piss off.

It's a less indulgent environment, of course. There's no room for filler anymore.

As to what you say about the 60s, you're right. Much of that music was written to a formula by bright, wealthy and well-educated Jewish kids in the Brill Building. or it was written by Motown to a formula.

You forgive those formulae now because they were new then, but if you heard those things released today, you wouldn't. Why not? Because they're derivative? Why does that matter? They're still pleasing, aren't they?

[Berni]

can't go around decrying others' adherence to a comforting fiction while clinging desperately to another.

Oh, and I like history, too. And the very occasional drug.

[Ashberto]

but mistakes are always made in evolution. Stop all mutations and evolution stops. But perhaps in the same way that the fly has not changed in millions of years because it has learned to eat ****, today's audio product has stabilised because people are happy listening to **** songs at **** resolutions through **** speakers.

[Classic Jorge]

And more, if anything, have looked at Jack Vetriano and gone "it is a painting".

The fact you can synthesise it doesn't make it any less valid, if it does then I look forward to explaining this to your new wife without having to enlist a decent solicitor soon after.

Art is not exclusive, unless you mean exclusive to the people who do not possess the requisite sensory organs.

[Berni]

Are they lacking in sensory organs? Are they wired up wrong? Or are they just wrong because you know what good art is and they don't?

[Berni]

[Classic Jorge]

Even with his excellent name