The trade organization has filed a petition asking the courts to punish Ray Beckerman, the lawyer who runs the blog Recording Industry Vs. The People, for being "vexatious" ("causing or tending to cause annoyance, frustration, or worry," in case you, like me, need to look up that word). Beckerman has acted as an attorney for several defendants being targeted by the RIAA, and the labels aren't looking kindly upon his decision to blog about the litigation.

Finally, as this Court is aware, Defendant's counsel has maintained an anti-recording industry blog during the course of this case and has consistently posted virtually every one of his baseless motions on his blog seeking to bolster his public relations campaign and embarrass Plaintiffs. Such vexatious conduct demeans the integrity of these judicial proceedings and warrants this imposition of sanctions.

How dare he! Posting public court information in an easily accessible medium! The scoundrel! This seems to be another one of those RIAA moves that hurts their public image more than it helps, but perhaps they're operating under the impression that someone out there enjoys nothing more than watching a good old-fashioned attempt to drown people in legal fees.

RIAA Goes After Ray Beckerman, Demands Monetary Sanctions [Techdirt]

In honor of this announcement, I'll try a little "strategic partnering" of my own on this Friday afternoon and share the recipe for a Bacardi Cocktail, which I've adopted from Wayne Curtis' fine And A Bottle Of Rum: A History Of The New World In Ten Cocktails. It's one of the best books I've read in the past year, rich in both history and spirit recommendations, and it has a pretty great investigation into the rum company's emigration from Cuba.

Bacardi Cocktail
2 oz. White Bacardi rum
1 tbsp. lime juice
1. tsp. simple syrup (bar sugar also acceptable)
1/2 tsp. grenadine

Shake the ingredients with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a lime slice.

I'm well on my way to becoming a brand ambassador!

Bacardi Brand Teams Up With Blogs [Billboard]
And A Bottle Of Rum [Amazon]

First you have, of course, your person in the know who makes you want to erase any knowledge of anything you might have ever possessed, ever:

hahaha get on the list next time fools.... free booze and no lines. just you know, hang out and get to know the right people or lose some weight and be cuter and then you can be where everyone else wants to

The street team member behind the cloak of anonymity:

this was as close to beatlemania (or menudomania) as Ive ever seen the scene at the pool. the crowd was super loud even for ting tings (we listened from outside, never got in). but if you were inside it was only half the story. You had people scaling fences, 20ish girls in high heals climbing that big 10 foot chainlink fence and heroically making it inside, you had people in the playground climbing on the rock, on the monkey bars, there were people up on the fire escapes two blocks away. there was blood sweat and tears out there. even though we never made it in, seeing all this and listening from the outside still made for a memorable day. esp when they played "time to pretend". it was so moving to hear the people sing it under their breath. just an amazing amazing day. MGMT will be huge after this, mark my words.

(Beatlemania? You do mean as in the cover band, right? I'm going to say yes, if only because of this person's preferred spelling of "heels.")

And your obligatory missed connections, "funny people" edition:

I saw a hipster awkwardly and unathletically jump the fence, splitting his pants. No joke. Hilarious.

anyone see the old man who got nabbed by the cops trying to get under the fence by the port-a-potties?

the naked black dude on the slip and slide was really throwing himself out there.

Why do people crowdwatch so much at fucking shows? Who cares?

Duh, to post comments that are more insightful than yours, dude!

Moving on, here we have people who are going to be laid off soon, if karma is real:

i was with blah and we are stunning young men, each bestowed with well paying jobs



we tipped 6 bucks on top of the 6 dollar price of beer because we are filthy fucking rich

And finally, what all 160-plus comments all pretty much told me in toto, summed up quite succinctly by anonymous @ 8:39 a.m.:

blah blah blah, the line was long, blah blah blah, I hate people who cut, blah blah blah, i cut in line, blah blah blah, mgmt doesn't have that many fans, blah blah bah, i deserved to be in there more than you did.

Oh, Internet. I love the way you bring the people together.

MGMT @ McCarren Pool was packed [Brooklyn Vegan]
[Photo via Suburban Cowboy]

The key piece in this equation is, of course, RCRD LBL, the free-music-via-widgetry site that got a fair amount of press at its launch because it was founded in part by minor blogging deity Peter Rojas. (Who apparently learned all he needed to know about music blogging from running gadget-blog heavyweights Gizmodo and Engadget.) Since its launch, the site's offerings have mostly specialized in what would be considered bonus tracks by boutique-ish indie acts that would, well, be covered by The Fader; not that I don't like Bat For Lashes or Wye Oak, but for a site that made such a big deal about making the money it was paying artists back via ads, it sure did seem like it was forcibly constraining its demographic via its musical offerings.

Note that a Santogold song posted six weeks ago is still at the top of the site's most-downloaded list after all this time; she's one of the few artists on the site who's actually exhibited some sort of mainstream appeal. Of course, part of that could be because she's one of the few artists with said appeal whose labels have allowed her to be on the site. (Being signed to RCRD LBL partner Downtown records surely helped.) That starpower might increase soon: According to Fortune Rojas et al are talking to "a big act" about releasing their next album, two tracks at a time and underwritten by a single sponsor. (Odds on said "big act" being one whose career was shepherded to breaking-even-on-the-advance stardom by a major label: 6-1. Odds on it being Gnarls Barkley: As close to even as you can get.)

Add all those factors up and you'll see why I've been generally skeptical about the whole venture, why I haven't really had much reason to visit it (although I heard the Santogold song was pretty great), and why after all this time I've found its two most notable aspects to be been the fact that it got as much traction as it did despite requiring so many clicks to get from a blog post to a song, and the fact that bloggers actually seemed to be honoring the site's simple "Please don't repost these songs, thx" request. One wonders if advertisers are starting to see the site's drawbacks as well, and that part of the reason the ad-network idea (and its faulty math) seems like a good idea now is the fact that "curated" aspect of the site is starting to lose its appeal as the overall ad market weakens, and as the seemingly desirable demographic that needs the latest A Place To Bury Strangers download simultaneously shrinks and becomes less and less golden in the eyes of advertisers.

Music blogs' network effect [Fortune]

1. Call Pitchfork a music blog. Never mind that it's been around, as you point out in your article, since 1995—two years before the term "weblog" was invented, and four before Peter Merholz coined the shorter version; never mind that the only aspects of the site that vaguely resembles a music blog are the Forkcast and the News section, neither of which have the coronation power of a "Best New Music" from its reviewers. Who aren't bloggers (well, at least not for Pitchfork, anyway).

2. Use as your new media "expert" a futurist whose recent forays into the digital-music world ended in failure. Remember the guy who coined the term BlogJ? Yeah, his "blogs will be the next record labels" spiel is quoted here, although left out of the piece is the fact that his recent experiment in Web 2.0 widgetry went tits-up last week.

3. Fill your story with data-free anecdotes, because they make lovely window dressing. Music blogs apparently have "young readers." How is Sandoval aware of this? We don't know, because there aren't any actual numbers in the story at all aside from the number of unique readers Pitchfork gets a month (1.5 million) and the number of words Rolling Stone's Nathan Brackett thinks that the average Man Man blurb has (50).

4. On that note, never, ever press for details. Would you be interested to know that eMusic's Yancey Strickler (who, it should be known, is a friend), who's given space to pontificate on music blogging, writes a music blog for his employer, which could make for some interesting discussion of blogging-for-dollars in a story that mentions corporate influence? Want to know how BrooklynVegan "developed a reputation for being the must-read blog for concert information"? Like to know what, exactly, was inaccurate in the reporting about Stereogum's sale, as Scott Lapatine claims? Too bad, because Sandoval isn't interested in making those details known. (At least not yet! Maybe there's a sequel to this piece coming—Music Blogs II: Return To WordPress!)

5. Get an old-media type to comment on how the blog kids should get off his fact-checked lawn—and then fail to fact-check his comments. "The blogs do the really quick 50-word update on what a band's doing," Brackett tells Sandoval. "They'll write about (singer) Lilly [sic!!!] Allen releasing a new EP or (the band) Man Man is preparing an album. The way Rolling Stone competes is we pick up the phone and bring original reporting. We take advantage of our access. Most blogs don't have the staffs to pick up the phone." Well, most blogs also aren't subsidiaries of huge magazines that can be sources for repurposed content. And really, does recapping a reality TV show count as "original reporting" these days? I guess it's a good thing that I got cable in my office after all.

Music blogs: The new wall of sound [CNet]

ONCE AGAIN ON APRIL FOOLS DAY, EVEN THOUGH I KNEW IT WAS A JOKE. I GOT OUT OF MY BED, PUT ON MY STILLETTO'S AND WENT TO TARGET TO GET DA NASTIEST BITCH'S ALBUM!!!!!! I HOPE DAT BITCH DOES DA SAME. SEE...... WE HAVE TO STICK TOGETHER!!!! REMEMBER??????? SO I DID..... I BOUGHT IT!!! AND ONCE AGAIN IT WAS A DISSAPPOINTMENT!!! MY RECOMMENDATION...... PLEASE DONT WASTE UR TIME OR UR MONEY!!! BURN IT, BOOTLEG IT, RIP IT BUT PLEASE DONT WASTE UR MONEY. GO GET A 7 WIT DAT!!! I SUFFERED FO YALL.....ITS OK..... I GOT YALL.... NASTI MUZIK O8!!!!! HERE IS MY REVIEW!!!!!!!!!!



...TRACK 4: SINGLE AGAIN



HATED IT!!!! WE GIVE DAT SHYT TWO THUMBS DOWN!!!! U SINGLE AGAIN BUT NOT BY CHOICE...... HOE WEEZYYY WOKE UP!!! HE DONT LUV U HOE!!!! U SINGLE AGAIN CUZ HE LEFT UR DOG ASS!!! HOE WHAT U GONE NAME YA BABY? BABYYYY? CUZ IN 98 U WAS FUCKING BABY!!! U AINT MARRIED YET????? U CANT TURN A HOE INTO A HOUSEWIFE. CUZ U LOOKED A HOT MESS IN DAT WHITE WEDDING DRESS!!! ALL WHITE IS NOT FO U!!! STICK TO DA STRIPPA SHOES!!! OR WRITE A BOOK LIKE UR TWIN SISTA....SUPAHEAD!!! CUZ ITS OBVIOUS U CANT SELL NO RECORDS. MY RECOMMENDATION..........PORN!!! OH, MY BAD, UR BODY IS DETERIORATING AND NOBODY WANNA FUCK U NO MOE!!! TRY A BLOW UP BOBBLE HEAD TRINA DOLL!!! CUZ UR PERFUME AINT SELLING EITHER!!!

Why couldn't Biggie and Tupac have settled it like this? Maybe Trina will walk down to Best Buy later this spring and give Khia's Nasty Muzik similar consideration.

TRINA STILL DA NASTIEST ALBUM REVIEW [Khia's Myspace Blog, via Oh No]
What's Beef? (NSFW) [Shan2001's Journal]
[Photo: Getty Images]

Wayne's drastic improvement from his Cash Money days, coupled with the South's moment in the sun, ensured that narrative-hungry writers would annoint someone sub-Mason-Dixon as the new king of hip-hop. With Scarface and Andre 3000 falling back and half of UGK locked up, Wayne seemed like the best bet. In a way, his rise seemed tailor-made for the zeitgeist of this jangled Internet age, his songs blessed with a sense of ephemera that jibes with the notion of constant content fit to be devoured and forgotten ten minutes later. There are as many Wayne songs as there are blogs, and like the blogosphere, the quality is wildly uneven. For every show-stopping moment like "Cannon" or "Upgrade U," there are ten tracks filled with repetitive simile-laden boasts that Wayne's champions would like to call free-associative genius, but really just prove that it is somehow possible to be both the hardest working man in hip-hop and incredibly lazy at the same time.

Given the chance to appear on Graduation and American Gangster, two rap albums from 2007 that were good enough to receive burn beyond the turn of the decade, Weezy whiffed—squandering the rare opportunity to broaden his fanbase beyond his key constituency of Southerners, 13-year olds, and white music critics with 180+ IQs, prestigious liberal arts degrees, and questionable taste in hip-hop. Wayne apologists scoffed that their hero had already had so many great moments that year, but his detractors sagely pointed out that anyone purporting to be the best rapper alive shouldn't suck this much on both of the year's big-ticket rap records.

That's perhaps the most frustrating thing about the Wayne question: only two opinions seem to exist, both of which are wrong. (Wayne is neither savior nor Satan. What he is a talented rapper with absolutely no concept of quality control.) The first swallows his hyperbole and concludes that he is the greatest rapper alive, a prolific, infallible genius who operates in a Bizarro galaxy heretofore reserved for such king weirdos as Mike Tyson, Cam'ron, and Kim Jung-Il. The other labels him complete garbage, a walking, talking, Baby-kissing plague on humanity responsible for SARS, Ebola, and the assassinations of both Kennedys.^** Ultimately, what this yields is bad criticism, with his admirers refusing to acknowledge his myriad atrocious moments and his "haters" never conceding an inch, with both teams waiting for the "classic" album that will either confirm his place in the pantheon or halt the critical love train.

The notion of needing to drop a classic album seems slightly antiquated, but in fact it isn't. While short stories, short films, and single MP3s obviously have their merits, no amount of postmodernist revision will ever alter the fact that the novel, the feature film, and the album will remain the standard-bearers of art. (Sorry.) Lil Wayne has not dropped a classic album, though if you lopped 20 minutes off Carter II, you could arguably state your case. Logically, Carter III would be make-or-break time, the chance for Wayne to either shut up the peanut gallery^*** or leave the heads of the hype machine with a whole lot of omelet on their face. Neither of these two things will probably happen.

While it remains to be seen what exactly would convert Wayne's naysayers, it is certain that no matter how bad Carter III is, some corners of the critical community will stop at nothing to convince you of its greatness. In particular, no two critics have been more strident in their homerism than Tom Breihan, of the Village Voice and Pitchfork and Marc Hogan, the main writer of Pitchfork's Forkcast. ReadBreihan's love letter to "Lollipop," a song that he himself manages to call

a blatant sellout-move capitulation to everything lame in today's pop-music world: gallingly obvious central lyrical sex-as-candy analogy, T-Pain-esque layered-up autotuned vocals, simplistic snap-music drum-pattern, hushed trancey synth-whooshes playing something that sounds suspiciously like the melody to Flo Rida's "Low," no rapping whatsoever and... screaming butt-rock guitar solos.

Forget the fact that "Lollipop" does have rapping, however terrible it may be; forget the fact that Breihan somehow manages to compare "Lollipop" to Earth Wind & Fire's "Let's Groove," a piece of spin that would make James Carville smile. The review concludes by telling us that we should "celebrate the fact that Lil Wayne has made his "Candy Shop" without compromising his inner weirdness."

In fact, there is nothing weird about "Lollipop," a song that feels more cynically calculating than almost anything released in 2008. It's lyrical content is a clumsy homework assignment from 50 Cent's School Of How To Write Songs For 14-Year-Old Girls With Tacky Sex Metaphors For Hooks. (In particular, "Shorty Want a Thug/Bottles in the Club/Shorty Need a Hug" makes Benzino look like Arthur Rimbaud.) Meanwhile, it completely style-jacks T-Pain, a guy who stole every one of his ideas from Roger Troutman, never mind Snoop Dogg's "Sensual Seduction." Hell, even the "Lollipop" video is corny, a glitzy, formulaic romp through Las Vegas that feels suspiciously like a cliched combo of the videos for 112's "Only You" and 2Pac's "How Do U Want It."

Incidentally, there is one defense for "Lollipop": It's a big, absolutely retarded pop song that you enjoy dancing to at clubs. This is its sole intent. As rap music, it's garbage; as pop, it's middle-of-the-road filler fit to be played until Labor Day and not a moment later. What it isn't is "sly, heady... melodrama," as Breihan puts it, or a "savvy pop move," as Hogan calls it. What Snoop did was a "savvy pop move," the sort of desperate sellout look that artists need to do when there's nothing left in the well; "the greatest rapper alive" shouldn't have to resort to singles you can Xerox (no Hillary Clinton).

If "Lollipop" is a shameless, poorly executed, but well-thought out play for the charts, "A Millie" is the opposite, a half-baked and sloppy street single with Wayne once again in mixtape mode, stringing together simile after simile for five and a half minutes of banal shit-talking. Of course, there are a few clever lyrical turns. "I don't owe you like two vowels" is as good as anything Lupe Fiasco has written, but like Weezy's entire discography, "A Millie" is maddeningly inconsistent. Its beat is a hiccuping, overly repetitive, minimalist mess that sounds like it could only have been selected by someone under the influence of too much drank and drugs. Meanwhile, Wayne attempts to mask his empty-calorie lyrics by relying on his now-familiar grab-bag of vocal tics, forcing syllables to stretch that shouldn't stretch, modulating his voice without purpose, everything strictly for schtick and effect. At one point, he even boasts that "none of this shit is written down," but that goes without saying. After all, any rapper who writes a lyric as lazy as "we pop 'em like Redenbacher" deserves his MC pass revoked. (Can we all admit that Jay and Big's claims that they never wrote down lyrics have caused more harm than any trivia tidbit in music history?)

But Hogan dismisses anyone with a gripe: "haters are already foaming at the mouth... the rest of us know better than to rush the flow." God forbid, anyone gets between Hogan and Wayne's uh..."flow." "A Millie" is just mediocre, a boiler mix-tape track that would be met with yawns were it released by Papoose, most frustrating than is the one-sided nature of its criticism, with its arrogant tone and nebulous taunts at "haters." Flip through the Pitchfork archives, and you'll be hard-pressed to find inasmuch as a negative word about Wayne, with the one universally loathed Wayne record, Like Father Like Son, weirdly never getting a review despite its single, "Stuntin' Like My Daddy," receiving a glowing, four-star review from Breihan.

Granted, Wayne's detractors are notoriously venomous and often misguided, but their anger partly stems from a critical vogue that refuses to praise anything that isn't crack rap and/or nakedly commercial. In the past six months, hip-hop has seen strong output from a new generation of rappers—Jay Electronica, Wale, The Knux, Pacific Division, Blu and Clean Guns—yet not one of these worthy artists has gotten their own post on the Forkcast or Status Ain't Hood, despite obviously needing the exposure a whole lot more than the platinum-plus "Young Money Millionaire." It remains to be seen whether Carter III will be the masterpiece capable of validating the slavish Wayne worship that has taken place over the past few years. But what is certain is that judging from the reviews of its first two singles, you'll be hearing the praises of its unmistakable brilliance.

Besides, no matter what, it can't be worse than Mike Jones or Paul Wall.

^* On another note, if "Loungin" is not the most quintessential mid-'90s rap video, than what is?
^** Though if one were to judge Wayne strictly off his appearance—which is not unlike that of a drank and pills-addled Whoopi Goldberg—SARS seems like a reasonable guess.
^***Likely filled with fans of Peanut Butter Wolf.

1. Visit My MP3 Tumblelog page on Yahoo! Pipes
2. Enter your Last.fm user name and click "Run Pipe". If no tracks appear, that means the tool was unable to find matching MP3's from the web. You need to wait until some appear in order to post them to Tumblr.
3. Once some tracks appear in Pipes, select "More Options > Get as RSS" and copy the RSS URL.
4. Login to your new Tumblr account and select "Account > Feeds" from the tab at the top of the page.
5. Add the Pipes RSS feed as "links with summaries" to start importing your music.
6. Copy the embed code from section "B" on the Yahoo! Media Player page and paste that line of code into the "description" field on your new Tumblr's theme Customize page.
7. There is no step 7. You're done!

Last.fm will track your listening habits. Pipes will find MP3's from the web matching the new songs you listen to. Tumblr will import the songs. People can play the songs on your page using the Yahoo! Media Player. The only issue I've noticed is that the sites hosting the MP3's might eventually remove the MP3 file that your site links to. Fortunately, the Yahoo! Media Player handles this gracefully. If you try to play a MP3 that's no longer available, the player will skip to the next song after a few seconds.

Some enterprising guy has already figured out a way to monetize this sucker! And yes, I used the word "monetize" because its ickiness is pretty appropriate to this whole enterprise.

It's genius is how it turns the (mostly) passive activity of listening to music into a content creating endeavor (albeit, an automated endeavor). The newest version of the Yahoo player even has a 'buy' button, that lets you link in your own Amazon affiliate code. ...

So every time someone buys a track after listening to it on my Tumblr blog, I get something like a nice shiny nickle. In theory, this means one could get paid to listen to music - truly my dream job. All I need is more traffic, and better taste in music ;)

Passive endeavors meet passive endeavors! Just think, this means that there will be more music blogs out there, only this time, instead of the delusion that they're "tastemaking"—which at least implies something in the way of expended effort—they'll sit around dreaming about the riches they'll make from just listening to music, which, as we all know, is a very lucrative enterprise. Here's hoping that the blogger above isn't expecting much more than "nickles" to start rolling his way.

How To Make Your Own Music Site In 10 Minutes [joelaz.com]
Music Blogs Made Easy [Mixed Content]

It seems the holier-than-thou music community didn't take too kindly to her invading their most sacred of sacred cows (or maybe they just weren't fans of EVOO), and they let her know about it through a series of snarky posts and general unpleasantness, the point of which seemed rather lost on the celebrity chef herself.

"I'm not aware about what blogs were saying about me," Ray told MTV News on Tuesday (March 4). "To be honest, I have five jobs, so I'm aware of what I have to do for them when we get up in the morning. But I don't see why we'd be out of place down there, when we're just fans of music who decided to put on a show. I guess if they don't like good music, and they don't like good food, they don't have to go."...

"My husband and I listened to a bunch of discs and picked our favorites," Ray explained. "We also have Sirius, so we're always listening to the Left of Center program, which is how we heard the Raveonettes. With a band like [Holy F—-], I have to say that it was the name that got us listening. But we're glad we did. They're pretty good.

Ouch! Looks like she took your blog and wiped her feet with it, Stereogum. She's got five dogs jobs, a Sirius radio, and a media empire. What do you have? I know this particular corner of the Web (well, probably just me, actually) can be filled with bile, but I've turned over a new leaf. General unpleasantness, begone! Thanks, Rachael. (One suggestion, though... is it too late to get rid of the kid from Napoleon Dynamite as the DJ?)

Either way, the idea that a music conference of any sort doesn't have deep embedded links to corporations is sort of absurd and ridiculous, and it's hard to zing Rachael Ray's show when there are Miller Lite/Dell/Toyota/Citibank sponsorships lining Austin's streets next week. But, hey, if you enjoy low-blow pseudo-journalistic cheap shots, have at Ray and her free snacks and sort of indieish taste. Just don't be surprised if you see her next to the stage at the Beauty Bar, wiping aside a tear.

[UPDATE: The original MTV piece has been updated to note that Ray has five jobs, and not five dogs.]

Rachael Ray Defends Her Indie-Rock SXSW Party, Featuring Raveonettes, Holy F—- And Mac 'N Cheese [MTV]

THEY'RE KIND OF SNOBBY

Hi Shannon,



If you took some time to go to our blog, and actually read it, you'll find all the research you need.
An informal blanket email (that exposes your mailing list, and, my email address) is not very appealing, or effective, and it leads me to believe, without even checking your site, that we probably are not the type of blog that would be interested in getting any info or content from your "music and celebrity" clients.
Please remove my email from any further mass mailings you are sending.



Best,



Lori Riegler - Trash Menagerie

THEY DON'T REALLY UNDERSTAND THE WHOLE CONCEPT OF 'IRONY'

Shannon,



Spamming like this, with recipients' email addresses in the clear, is an amateur move to say the least.



Please remove me from Big Machine's mailing list immediately.



Murphy

THEY HAVE OPINIONS, SORT OF

There is no way to remove our mail addresses in an opt-out method on their site either it seems. And I agree, sending the spam list like they did is very amateur and does not make me feel comfortable in doing Business with them either.



Steve Bridges (aka VooDooStevie)

VooDooRadio - A Devilishly Good Podcast

THEY'RE NOT AFRAID TO BE SERVICEY

I apologize up front for continuing the spamming, but it is in hopes to nip it now.



all of you that are continuing to Reply All to be removed are continuing to spam the rest of us.



Please Reply only to this Shannon.



thanks,

Dodge

THEY'RE—WAIT, WAIT, WHAT THE HELL IS "FINANCIAL AID INTERNET RADIO?"

Might I suggest that when you send out spam, you BCC your mailing
list, rather than send a large message to 340 recipients, most of whom
probably didn't want their email addresses published in so public a
forum?



Oh, and please remove me from Big Machine Media's mailing list. I can
guarantee that your artists and musicians will NOT be played on my
show now.



Thanks.



Christopher S. Penn
Producer, the Financial Aid Podcast
Daily free financial aid internet radio, no iPod required

CATEGORY 1: The easily confused.
Because they didn't realize that the text of Trent's blog post was, in fact, a hyperlink to the AllHipHop.com story breaking the news. Prone to using lots of punctuation.

Anonymous said...

????? Trent stop confusing me!!!!!!

18/2/08 6:50 PM

CATEGORY 2: The people who are just psyched to be there right now, man.
Or, people who don't really understand the Internet (blog-comment division).

Anonymous said...

TR Holaday again from Oklahoma City. thanks Trent for filming Halo 22 Beside You In Time here at the Ford Center. Oklahoma loves their NIN!!! Tool twice in six months!!! riddle117@aol.com

18/2/08 7:00 PM

CATEGORY 3: The pick-up artists.
Also known as the people who think that nin.com is actually hookupwithtrent.com.

iwannalicktrentswholeentirebody said...

I find it extremely sexy that you're happy about this. They deserve it.

18/2/08 10:02 PM

CATEGORY 4: The business-school dropouts.
The spelling lesson that covers "clientele" is clearly in the second-year curriculum.

ChristySue33 said...

Someone had said they felt sorry for all those people that lost their jobs. Here's my take. They were working for a company who's cliental were unhappy. Publicly unhappy. One client so unhappy he was actually telling his fans NOT to buy his cd. Clients were looking for ways out of their contracts ... which means, they were not going to renew when it reached it's end (if that's how it works). If you ask me, they had plenty of red flags. If they were smart, they would have prepared themselves, gotten new jobs lined up. I would have. How many people are we even really talking about here? It's not like we're talking about an entire series of factories closing down. They don't make the cd's, they just promote them. As for the CEO's of the company, too bad so sad ... I do not feel sorry for them at all. If they had treated their cliental more fairly maybe they wouldn't be in this position in the first place.

19/2/08 3:25 AM

CATEGORY 5: The people with obvious issues.
This could also be called "the people who forgot that they weren't at quirkyalone.com."

Hybrid 756 said...

Oh aye. WHY does everyone think everyone "needs" a woman, or a man, or another person or whateveritis?

IS ANYONE ELSE OUT THERE COMPLETELY OK WITH SOLITUDE???

Or am I just a complete fucking freak??

I don't understand people...

/rant

19/2/08 5:08 AM

CATEGORY 6: The confronters.
Who aren't afraid to step up and call the site's proprietor an asshole. (Hey, maybe he'll write a song about them now!)

robster said...

love your music trent but, can`t stand how you applaud the loss of people`s jobs and all the strain the falling of a record label will cause to its creditors, employees, artists and associates. Makes you sound like a REAL asshole. What about the upcoming artists without a large fanbase, instead record companies will focus investing in safe music and the artform itself will suffer

19/2/08 1:35 AM

CATEGORY 7: The people who should maybe think about getting blogs of their own.
Characterized by long-windedness, mutiple posts, bad spelling, despondency, and a curious need to bring Paris Hilton into their argument.

ChicLuba said...

ooo sounds like TR "might"( please take notice of this word) be a little pissed about something.

Very curious...

what did I miss?

was there another shotty interview?

18/2/08 9:36 PM

ChicLuba said...

Agreed, but it depends on whether he's getting paid for his work or just his face. Now it seems that art itself is not enough, you have to be an icon...

Which is detrimental to all artists.

Because without an audience to enjoy their work what is an artist?

It's ok to be an icon if you really are making art, because more than likely you'll inspire others, but it's not ok if your already an icon, and you just slop some shit together and call it art just to make money.

That is what's called a Paris Hilton... Although how she ever came to be an icon in the first place is beyond me...

what just because you're rich all of a sudden your famous, I mean I'd understand if she was contributing to charities, and doing philanthropy work or something like that, but becoming famous jst because she comes from a rich family...

What is the world comming to?

what happened to our standards?

18/2/08 9:47 PM

ChicLuba said...

chicluba, the text is a link.you must click it and read the story.

18/2/08 9:40 PM

oh! lol I feel like such a dummy, I didn't even notice =P

and I'm talking about the Cnet bs that went on a little while ago, taking someones words out of context to fit your purpose... that's not a very honorable way to report something.

18/2/08 9:50 PM

ChicLuba said...

oh wow... you know I haven't heard about TVT till now...

I'm so out of the loop >.>

18/2/08 9:53 PM

ChicLuba said...

ok first things first, lets not start putting words in my mouth...

I have no clue if Paris is a slut nor do I care to know considering it's none of our god damned businss to begin with, someone's sex life should be kept personal and not a public matter, that's just like what they did to clinton, people try to use it as ammo to tear someone down but in reality does that shit really fucking matter...

When I was younger I lived in a small town called Live Oak, we liked to call it Dead Oak, because the extent of fun you could have was going to a bowling ally, or doing drugs and making babies...

During a party I had gone to I ended up getting a little too drunk and made out with my room mate, which also happened to be a girl. Some people, without my knowledge, took pictures and the next thing I knew the wholetown knew about it and I was a "lesbian". BS of course and my reputation was ruined for a period of time, but in the end it didn't change the minds ofmy real friends, because they knew who I really was despite my drunken exploration.

Some people like to be taped when having sex... It turns them on, and whatever to each his own, but I don't think they should be condemned for it...

Now on the other hand, before Paris got into singing, before she did acting or any other form of entertainment, even before that stupid "Simple Life" BS, which I'm actually dissapointed in them for because they were really dicks to some of the people that took them in.

but before all that she was just some rich socialite, and that's what she became famous for, being a rich socialite, and that is where I think we have fallen off the mark as an audience, I mean sure it lead her to have an interesting career, I'm not going to say great, because personally I don't like her, but whatever, but this industry, whether you're an artist or a musician or a writer, is incredibly hard to get into, and I don't think it's really fair for people who have money to be able to just be famous just for having money...

think of all the artists who don't have money, but are on a much higher level of creativiy than PH, but they struggle because they don't have the cash flow to back them up...

I don't think art should be free, artists should be compensated for that hard work, and time and effort they put into it... it'snot as easy as snappin your fingers and it's done, I mean look at Piccaso, the man went in sane and chopped his ear off for the sake of art/ or love, but I mean that's well worth compensating him!

but I do think that it should be easier to get into the industry... so what you have to sort through a few crappy bands and artists to get to the good ones, it makes it like finding a diamond in the rough... it's well worth it if it brings some real art to the table...

who knows maybe the next "Einstein" of music is out there, but because he doesn't have money he can't do anything for us.. and I think that's a shame.

19/2/08 6:50 AM

(There's more. I'll spare you.)

CATEGORY 8: The people who in all likelihood do have blogs of their own and are probably penning their own version of this post right now.
Self-explanatory after you read the sample comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi I'm an excited anonymous commenter who has no idea what's going on or what this post even means but damned if that's going to stop me from saying something! Anything! It doesn't matter what it is, just that I say it here, preferably very quickly after the initial post is made! Just for the fleeting novelty of leaving some text on this temporary page - a disposable piece of nothing to help half a minute of my boring life pass by a little faster! Nine Inch Nails woooo!

18/2/08 6:59 PM

Post a Comment [Blogger.com]
Earlier: TVT Fires Most Of Its Staff, Is Expected To File Chapter 11

The crackdown on pop blogs has been coming down the pike for a while—particularly in the case of Kevipod Music, which, while a great resource, was operated by a guy who tagged his ZShare uploads with his blog's name—and why it's happening with Carey's record, and not, say, Janet Jackson's (ooh, burn!) is probably because the un-Googleable E=MC² is the priority for Island Def Jam in the first half of the year. Mariah's last effort, The Emancipation of Mimi, sold more than five million copies and helped people forget about Glitter; thanks to Carey's wide appeal, the first week of E=MC²'s sales will be a true test of just how much the bottom has dropped out of the CD market, and whether or not its true depths have even been plumbed yet.

Oh, and in case you haven't heard the The-Dream-penned song—which is apparently about a sex tape?—a YouTube embed of it is below; it's a perfectly decent midtempo jam, although why R & B singers are all about sounding less like themselves and more like robotic sex dolls in 2008 is beyond me.

Blogger Madness [ALi's Blog]
Earlier: Mariah Carey Comes Down Hard On Music Blogger

WHAT HAPPENED? "Kevipod Music" recieved sometimes complains via emails from Blogger.com - i guess at request from the labels - about copyright songs. There were some songs i posted and i guess the labels saw them and contacted blogger to contact me to please remove them. They did warned that several complains would mean in a delete of the blog. And yesterday seems i got one more complain and so Blogger deleted the blog. I think i only recieved like 5 complains, and i don't think that's several, and I really didn't think Blogger would actually do it but what's done it's done you know. This day would come someday and i knew it. Every music blog is destined to this i guess someday. When you get popular, labels have the EYE more on you and complain the more and stuff.

As it turned out, the complaint that caused Blogger to turn off the site yesterday apparently stemmed from Mr. Kevipod posting a link to a snippet of Mariah Carey's new single, which is set to premiere—after many delays—today. Carey's new album is on Universal Music Group-distributed Island Def Jam, and as we all know, Doug Morris does not take kindly to being the shmoo!

Although it's pretty indicative of the ever-spiraling game of whack-a-mole taking place on the Internet that Kev was able to start another blog pretty much as soon as he realized that the first one was deleted, and subsequently squatted upon. But he's lost the spring in his e-step:

THE FUTURE? As i've said i have lost my blogging spirit. If i get the old URL back, or begin fresh with this new one someday again the blog will get deleted. Because since this is a music blog and post music is my duty the same thing will happen again. Maybe a only MUSIC NEWS blog could be an option but not now. Maybe someday i'll be back.

And so comes the end of another mini-chapter in the history of leak blogs—at least until one of the other sites in my RSS reader (like this guy) puts up the full MP3 of the song. (Chances are good that'll happen by the time I hit "publish" on this post.)

Blogger Learns the Hard Way: Don't Mess With Mariah's Music [Sandra Rose News]
News [Kevipod Music]

^* The person who owns the site right now is actually squatting on the Blogspot URL, which is indicative of an amazing amount of hubris/dumbassery on the part of said squatter.

Other lessons abound:

• Music blogging is totes a cinch! Quoth Wayne: "It's as easy as picking an artist in high reader demand (a sidebar on Hype Machine tells you the day's hottest searches) and whipping up an MP3 post, maybe even a sentence or two of commentary. Presto. Here come the hits." Dozens of them, am I right?

• No matter how much crap I'm getting in the mail, someone out there can rub my nose in the fact that they're getting better crap! "I get all kinds of fun shit in the mail," Music For Robots co-founder Mark Willett told Wayne. "Free cell phones, MP3 players, etc. I even got a free laptop for Christmas last night from Vista." Also: He says that he "never, ever" lets money or gifts sway his opinions. Quotes to journalists, however, are apparently fair game!

• Everyone has their own ways of dealing with slow news days! "In the early goings of his blog, Indie Surfer Blog admits to at times planting one foot on either side of [the posting stuff he may not like] line. But he claims to do it for the readers; not to appease publicists. 'Often I receive the emails direct from the musicians asking to be featured on the page, so I post about them even if I don't like their music,' he concedes. 'I'm also trying to feature different music genres, so I often post some music I'm not really into, but I think some readers may like it.' "

• Oliver Wang is a pretty smart guy! OK, I knew this already, but he at least is a realist about the lack of, shall we say, purity out in music-blog world, and how most readers don't really give a damn about little things like "ethics" as long as the content's good. "In the end, it's about the content, not necessarily the ethics of the content provider," he says. Especially if that "content" consists of Sendspace links to lots of songs—well, at least until someone complains!

• "Music Criticism 2.0" may be the worst phrase I've heard all year! Especially since it's being used to describe people who only write about bands if they're "into" them (or, in the case of The Music Slut, if said artist can rile up the readership enough to get the pageviews rolling). Is that really "criticism"? Ah, who cares, right? I gotta go, someone just uploaded a Radiohead MP3 and it's totally on elbo.ws right now!

Music criticism 2.0? [OJR]

Kevipod Music
Pretty Much Amazing
HM
I guess I'm Floating
Fluxblog
Stereogum
My Old Kentucky Blog
Aquarium Drunkard
Chris Picks
Live Music Blog

"The Seattle trio's ability to churn out consistently great songs with more variation than a bag of jelly beans is a trait worth admiring."

"Kevin Michael is a new R&B artist signed to Atlantic Records. My friend recently introduced me to him, and I've been loving everything I've been hearing!"

"I'm not the biggest fan of country music, with the exception of Alison Krauss (who btw has the #1 best selling album on Amazon.com right now) because no matter the genre, you can't help but recognize talented artists!"

"So, here we have the first song to leak off their upcoming album and it is titled "What Hurts The Most", btw yeah it is a cover of the Rascal Flatt's hit though the original singer was Mark Wills. This track's apparently going to be the first single and well, i like it! It's pretty cool."

"For a band whose record sales were so unremarkable while active, The Velvet Underground's influence has been anything but since."

We were going to keep going but kinda forgot about the words because there were so many awesome MP3s! Frankly we're liking everything we're hearing on these blogs. They're pretty cool!

Best Music Blog [2007 Weblog Awards]

Slowly but visibly many of these artists are inventing their careers. Not a career fueled by Krystal and delivered in limos, but rather one earned by practicing their craft, listening to their fans and delivering the results live.

The fans may only number from 20-100,000. But without greedy hands in the middle, the profits are enough. And mercifully, the results of this labor are not as ephemeral as in the past. If the artist's effort continues; fans stay loyal.

There will always be mega-stars and one hit wonders. But how hopeful it is for musicians, fans and for music, that there is finally a place for middle class of musicians proud of their craft and connected to their audience. And what wonderful opportunities await for the middle class of labels and other companies created to serve them.

It sounds almost utopian—too utopian, in fact, which is why I'm tempted to agree more with the analysis provided by Glenn of Coolfer in the post's comments:

I see what you're saying, but I'd be more prone to call it a growing lower-middle class. There is an absolute glut of music online. (Great music is indeed being created everywhere, but there's 1,000 times as much mediocre and terrible music clogging up the channels.) As the audience becomes more fractured, each player's piece of the pie shrinks.

As for increased loyalty, that will depend on the band's use of customer relationship tools. I believe success can be as fleeting as ever — look no further than the manner in which bloggers chew up and spit out bands at record rates — but there is definitely potential to keep fans if you do it correctly.

The idea that there is an "absolute glut" of music is one that I (and probably my mailman, too) have been thinking about a lot lately. During the OiNK brouhaha I was thinking about the massive amount of songs and albums downloaded/uploaded by each individual user, and how a lot of times it seems like it would be impossible to listen to all the music I currently own—for example, even though my iTunes library is at 32.5 days and counting, I can't stop listening to Blackout today—let alone all the music that's out there. I suspect this is true for most people, even (and maybe especially!) those with terabyte drives of MP3s they've pulled down from the Web. Which underscores Glenn's question: as more of these artists have the ability to access increasingly sophisticated ways to make, distribute, and market their music on their own—which results in said musical "middle class" becoming more populated—is the only way for that class' standing to go down, simply because of the fact that there are so many artists vying for fans' attention and only so many hours in a day? It's a tricky question, and one that I don't think has an easy answer, but I do think that it goes hand-in-hand with the problems that major labels are having right now, and why whatever form they'll be around in come, say, 2009 will probably look at least somewhat different from the way they look today.

Rise Of The Musical Middle Class [Hypebot]

1. The web is not like old media - it's free and can be used to spread your music. (what, you heard that one before?)
2. You can't start a virus without a good germ. (whatever you want to say about the quality of "Crank Dat...", its ability to spread is top-notch)
3. If you can get your fans to do your marketing for you, you really win (what, you heard that one before too?)
4. If you want to become more than famous (infamous like El Guapo), you need to find a way to get some of your shit loved by 13 year old white girls. If you think this doesn't apply to real hip-hop just ask LL Cool J, Wu-Tang Clan (where would they be commercially without Method Man), 50 Cent (go shorty, you're a pre-teen), Jay-Z (it's a hard knock life indeed) or even Slug.

All good points—especially the last one. But one thing that I think is important to note is that while sales of "Crank Dat" itself have been strong—its sales total is at 1,732,000 digital copies and counting—sales of Soulja Boy's album haven't been nearly as impressive; in its third week of availability, sales for SouljaBoyTellEm.com just cracked the 200,000 mark, and sales for "Crank Dat"'s follow-up single, the dance-instruction-free "Soulja Girl," are already starting to sag slightly in its third week on the chart. And that song, which was accompanied by a "Be A Soulja Girl" audience-participation contest when it premiered on TRL, seems like much more of a play for the 13-year-old set, than its predecessor. So do these tactics work for a career beyond a song, or is the Web 2.0 shortened attention span part and parcel of success in this era? Or should Soulja Boy have extended his TRL contest to all of YouTube, thereby ensuring his place on the YouTube top videos list for at least a few more weeks?

Crank Dat White Girl - the Soulja Boy lesson plan [Oh Word]
Soulja Boy White Girl Style... [YouTube]

Catbird CMJ 2007 Totals:
Number of Panels Attended: 8
Number of Bands Seen: 2
Number of Drive Like Jehu "Yank Crime" Sweatshirts Seen: 1
Number of Double-Takes Done After Walking Past A Guy Wearing A Drive Like Jehu "Yank Crime" Sweatshirt: 1

Panel 1 - Friday, October 19. 10:30am
Music Business Primer: Digital Distribution
A session focusing on the online music market, digital music outlets, blogs and other digital distribution options.

Panel 2 - Friday, October 19, 11:45am
DIY or DIE
This panel will discuss independent record label management with artists who have made it on their own, with special focus on whether or not the traditional record label model is still relevant in today's changing music industry.

Panel 3 - Friday, October 19, 1:15pm
Major Label Dilemma
Representatives from major and indie labels confront the inevitable ultimatum facing industry constituents. Should I deal with a major label, an indie or just go for it on my own? This panel explores the major label response to changing technology, pros and cons of working with an independent label and the impact of digital technology on the major vs. indie debate. The discussion will include analysis from varying points of view including that of the artist, the manager, the radio promoter, the label manager, the marketing director and more.

These three panels may have had three discrete topics according to the descriptions, but I tellya—there ended up being a hell of a lot of overlap, to the degree where my morning felt more like one long, contiguous session. And here's the main point that came out:

"PEOPLE, YOU GOTTA TALK TO THE KIDS ON THE MYSPACE."

Music Business Primer: Digital Distribution
In the morning's Digital Distro session (moderated by Tunecore's Jeff Price), the focus of the discussion actually centered on "online marketing" more than "digital distro" per se (which is totally fine, and which had the added bonus of making me feel okay about blowing off the 2:30 "Marketing" panel). The panelists briefly explained their individual services, and though there were two digital distro guys on the panel (in addition to Price, there was Tim Mitchell of IODA), one hardware guy (Keith Washo of SanDisk), and two service/marketing guys (Mike Eldredge of Fuzz, Paul Wright of MediaGuide), the most interesting input came from musician Xander Smith (of the band Run Run Run), as he was able to talk about some of this stuff from a "band's-eye view." I think he actually even said, "Online marketing is everything to my band." What struck me was how, in a time when most people are preaching "sneaky" marketing, forced grass-roots "viral" campaigns, and/or otherwise gaming the system, here was a guy proving that, in the end, the best way to succeed is just to be genuine, be sincere, and put in the work (and yes, it is work) necessary to engage the fans. In other words, "YOU GOTTA TALK TO THE KIDS ON THE MYSPACE."

DIY or DIE
The DIY panel, moderated by IndieHQ.Com/Suburban Home's Virgil Dickerson, featured Tom Gates of Nettwerk, Cortney Harding of Billboard, and Nick Young of the band A.i. (not to be confused with Sasha Frere-Jones' all-black R&B/funk-soul band, Ui). Gates and Harding both had some interesting input (including Harding's assertion—which I totally agree with—that a huge portion of the whole "success equation" is dependent simply on chance and luck), but again, in this panel, it was the musician who offered up the most interesting point of view. In this case, the (pun intended) Young musician was able to detail a long and convoluted story about what his band experienced while being aggressively courted, schmoozed, and signed by a major, only to have their record lost, shuffled, botched and buried once they were "in." Yes, I realize that's not a new or unique story—but that's not my point. My point is that holy cow all this crazy major-label shit is still happening! Insane, I tellya. Utterly insane. Anyway, the kid's band is now going it alone, releasing their new album via Tunecore, and, I would assume, TALKING TO THE KIDS ON THE MYSPACE.

Major Label Dilemma
Moderator David Purcell, ESQ, of NYU announced right off the bat that this wouldn't be a panel doing an "indies vs. majors" debate, because that was a debate that had been "done to death." Instead, the focus of this panel was to be "the business of being an artist in today's marketplace." On the panel were Stu Bergen of the Independent Label Group, Jason Fiber of Superfecta, Steve Savoca of Domino, Anders Johansson of Universal Sweden, and "Shane" from imeem. There was a lot of discussion of how label/artist relationships have been structured historically, how they're changing/being done now, and how they'll need to change moving forward. Ultimately, this lead to a question I've been pondering lately: "What exactly is the role of a label anymore?" Time was, a label would scout talent (no longer needed; Internet), advance money/studio time (no longer needed; ProTools), manufacture and distribute physical product (no longer needed; iTunes), and then market and promote (still needed). So my thinking was leading me to conclude that the labels of the future are, for lack of a better term, simply marketing companies. But after this session, I had to reconsider; it's all quite a bit deeper than that. Although an artist can now easily self-record, self-release, and self-promote/manage/book etc. (via contracted services), the labels (well, the good ones, at least) will always be able to offer an artist the benefits of their industry knowledge, experience, and relationships, and for that reason, the concept of "the label" will remain relevant. At the same time, we're losing the concept of the label as a "mark of quality;" we're on the way to a future in which an album's label will matter to the consumer about as much as a movie's production studio does ("Dude. I totally only see movies that are distributed by Lion's Gate. Lion's Gate-distributed movies totally rule."). Oh yeah, and I almost forgot: someone in the audience asked the panel about their thoughts regarding the social networking services, and whether or not artists and labels should focus any efforts there. Know what the response was? Here's a hint: it rhymes with this: "SHMEOPLE, YOU GOTTA SHMALK TO THE SHMIDS ON THE SHMYSPACE."

And so, as my weeklong sojourn in CMJ panel-land began to draw to a close, a gentle rain began to fall, and I settled in for the capstone panel:

Panel 3 - Friday, October 19, 3:45pm
The Almighty Blog
This panel explores the power to make or break artists that increasingly lies in the hands of influential bloggers. This discussion will feature some of the world's most respected bloggers as well as representatives of traditional media outlets hashing it out over the legitimacy of blog-power.

Let me preface by saying that for someone like me, who has been observing this stuff with a nitpicking, micro-level view (yes, sad/pathetic, I know) for quite a long time, this panel didn't get to touch on much more than a fairly general look at the music blogosphere. In the end, that was probably a good thing, because that precludes me from writing some 90-paragraph/Marathonpacks-length rambling dissertation. The panel was moderated by Wired's Eliot Van Buskirk, had blogger representation from FreeIndie/Limewire blogger Mike Frankel, Music For Robots' Mark Willett and "honorary blogger" Anthony Volodkin of Hype Machine, plus Karen Lieberman of Sony BMG, and Jaan Uhelszki of Rhapsody. They discussed music blogs in the following contexts: value(?), integrity(?), social/community aspect, professionalism(?), and monetization. It was interesting. Someone should have live-blogged it.

And then, toward the end, Eliot opened it up for questions, at which point an eloquent young man stood up and graced us with the following:

"Yeah, so, uh, like... um.... I have, like, um, two questions, or, uh, like a two-part question? And you can, ahem, you can, like, just answer, like, one part, or, um, like, both? Or, um... like, I guess, or, um, not answer either part or, um.... whatever. So, like, uh... blogs. Um, like, you know, like, Pitchfork? Like, um, how do blogs, er, I mean, like, um... how does Pitchfork fit into, like, everything? Do you guys, like, um....hate them? Or like, um... do you like them or, uh, hate them, or what? Or, like, whatever? And, um, my, uh.... my second part? So, like, uh, the future? Like is that gonna be, like, uh... podcasts, or video, or whatever? Because my friend like, he has a video, and uh... like, is the future in blogs gonna be like, uh, like podcasts, or like, uh, whatever? Or, um, whatever."

I believe the children are our future, folks. Let us heed this young man's powerful message. Let us look to the future with an eye on tomorrow, but with one foot planted firmly in today. Let us be respectful of those that have come before us, while blazing a new path forward with our music blogs, and our "like, um, podcasts," and our "uhh... videos or whatever." Let us never forget our roots, and let us never forget the value of honest, hard work. Let us build a new nation of music lovers, with a focus on community, and respect, and a drive for greatness. Let us reclaim music as something valuable and meaningful, and worthy of deep-listening, and let us nurture the artists, and cultivate an environment of openness, and innovation, and an eternal reverence for the Art. And people, let us talk to the kids on the MySpace.

"Get ready to get sick of hearing about this band"—it would be difficult to think of a more apt motto for indie rock in the age of the Internet. A loose genre defined not by any sound but rather by its opposition to (or exclusion from) corporate radio and labels, indie rock evolved out of the hardcore scene of the 1980s, at a time when finding out about important new bands depended much on whom you knew or where you were: News spread almost exclusively through word of mouth, through photocopied 'zines (often with circulations in three or even two digits), or through low-watt college radio stations.

Today, indie-rock culture remains an underground culture, basically by definition, in that its fans shun mainstream music in favor of lesser-known acts. But now, MySpace, iTunes, and Internet radio make location and friends irrelevant for discovering music. Blogs and aggregators enable fans to determine in just a few minutes what everyone else is listening to that day. What you know, where you are—these matter not at all. To be an insider today one must merely be fast. Once Mike found out that Pitchfork would be posting about the new band, one cannot blame him for his haste, because après Pitchfork, le déluge: Unknown bands become all-too-familiar bands in a month, and abandoned bands the next month. Get ready, that is, to get sick.

And as a companion piece of sorts, the proprietor of Pretty Goes With Pretty spun Wasik's piece into a must-read four-part series called "Can't Talk; Hyping," in which he discusses the churn of the music blogosphere and what he sees as the motivations of its writers:

You forget that half these blogs are outsiders in shitty apartments in Pensacola or Indianapolis, who likely started their little blogs because they loved music. Worse, they forget.

They post about multiple new bands per day with little articulation of what's worthwhile about them, aside from an audio clip, myspace link, a list of tour dates, and—not always—a perfunctory they're grrrreat! I guess they're assuming the music will speak for itself. Ultimately it does, of course, but rarely are mp3 blogs a true reflection of one person's tastes. There was a time when it seemed like most blogs were digging for new music. More recently, the passion seems to have been replaced by some kind of faux professionalism. At best they tell you what's good, not what's great. They're giving you all the dirt: you do the digging.

The problem of music blogs "[telling] you what's good, not what's great" has been a problem that I've had with the format—and its attendant charts—for some time. Especially now, with the increase of PR departments that promote their attendant bands' wares exclusively to blogs (which, as PGWP correctly points out, does so because it's interested in large part in "keeping its enemies close"), it's a lot easier for all those proclamations of "good" (or even "existent") to stack up in such a way that they sort of resemble the idea of "greatness." And what's most troubling to me about that, particularly recently, is the way those implicit declarations have fallen pretty much entirely in line with the e-mails that land in my inbox.

One of the earliest Idolator features was Track Marks, which traced bands' ascent on the elbo.ws charts via blog posts about them; over time, that feature became mostly used for figuring out how, exactly, music-related rumors got started, mainly because the narrative "this MP3 showed up in my inbox, then it sprang up everywhere" got kind of tedious to write. (Although we do reserve the right to go back to that feature's well again, if only because the Vampire Weekend "overheralded demo setting the stage for pre-first-album backlash" phenomenon seems to be replicating itself all over the place these days.) And I think the current state of the RSS feed outlined by Pretty Goes With Pretty—the lack of critical filters, the rise of the "promo MP3" and having to respond to that and only that if one is going to craft a post about a band, the symbiotic relationship between PR companies' aims and music bloggers' content—has also resulted in burnout on my end, with there being so much chatter and noise that I've gone back to only really trusting recommendations from friends and a few hand-picked sources in order to find out about new music. (Or I just tune it all out and watch TRL, even though it only shows full videos when it suffers from "technical difficulties.")

And really, when was the last time a blog "broke" a band beyond the one-shot promo MP3 catching fire? Sure, a large part of that is because the growth of the music-blog world has resulted in things becoming so diffuse that it's hard to have a "hit" beyond the most popular Usual Suspects Of Indie, but sometimes I wonder if the burnout as far as blogs, and music blogs, and the relentless torrent of new music, isn't something that's solely in my mind, and if there's just such a glut of bands and hypemen, you need to escape from it all by just going into another world for a while. Like TRL, for example. Or, as PGWP puts it:

... many of the bands proffered on hype blogs have no Genuine Listeners. For that we must buy albums, must sit with them, alone, undistracted, and hear them through our own ears, process them through the context of our own lives. For that, you've got to log off.

Pretty Goes With Pretty [prettygoeswithpretty.typepad.com]
Hype Machine [Oxford American]

How long before their rivalry turns to murder, 2Pac and Biggie style?

And how the hell do those NOW compilations ALWAYS rank so highly on the c