New Industry Stats (Good News)

Nielsen just released its Music 360 study of teen listening habits. Some good news about how teenagers listen to (and pay for) music. Some key metrics:

First off, despite all the online options, most people still discover new music via the radio:

• 48% discover music most often through the radio
• 10% discover music most often through friends/relatives
• 7% discover music most often through YouTube

Interestingly, teens listen to more music on YouTube than they do on the radio or online (is YouTube the new MTV?):

• 64% of teens listen to music through YouTube
• 56% of teens listen to music on the radio
• 53% of teens listen to music through iTunes
• 50% of teens listen to music on CD

What inspires teens to purchase music? Friends, of course:

• 54% are more likely to make a purchase based off a positive recommendation from a friend
• 25% are more likely to make a purchase based off a music blog/chat rooms
• 12% are more likely to make a purchase based off an endorsement from a brand
• 8% of all respondents share music on social networking sites, while 6% upload music.

What's a better value, CDs or digital downloads? Teens say digital, although CDs are close behind:

• 63% of purchasers identified digital albums as a very or fairly good value
• 61% identified digital tracks as a very or fairly good value
• 55% identified physical CDs as a very or fairly good value

Like I said, interesting stuff. In spite of all the digital hype, CDs and radio are still quite viable. It's a real smorgasbord out there!

EMI/Universal Music Merger

Two of the big four record labels are merging. Is the EMI/Universal merger a good thing? Probably not, as you can read here: http://futureofmusic.org/blog/2012/05/30/why-emi-umg-merger-bad-artists-and-fans.

Top Ten Artists

I was going through some posts from one of my other blogs, and stumbled across this one from back in 2010. It's two years old, but the sentiment holds. Here's how it goes:

VH1, the channel that used to play music videos, recently released their list of "100 Greatest Artists of All Time," as voted on by today's so-called artists. The list is a joke, of course, as by "all time" they mean "the rock era," as no one bothered to mention Frank Sinatra, George Gershwin, or J.S. Bach. Even taking the list as a rock-era list, however, there are some issues.

VH1's top 10 "greatest artists" were as follows:

1. The Beatles
2. Michael Jackson
3. Bob Dylan
4. Led Zeppelin
5. Rolling Stones
6. Jimi Hendrix
7. Prince
8. Elvis Presley
9. James Brown
10. Stevie Wonder

It's hard to argue against the Beatles heading the list, of course, but there's a lot wrong otherwise. I mean, there' no way Michael Jackson ranks over Dylan or Elvis, and there's really no justification for Prince to be in the top ten at all. It's really indefensible.

The problem, as I see it, is defining "best." It's just too subjective. My "best" isn't going to be the same as yours. Heck, my own definition of "best" will probably differ from day to day, depending on how I'm feeling about things.

So, given that most of the artists interviewed for the TV show talked about how big an influence a given artist was on them, personally, I'd like to change the criteria and suggest a list I'll call the "Top Ten Most Influential Artists of the Rock Era." Here's who I'd choose:

1. The Beatles
2. Bob Dylan
3. Elvis Presley
4. Chuck Berry
5. Berry Gordy
6. Phil Spector
7.Aretha Franklin
8. Madonna
9. Joni Mitchell
10. Rolling Stones

Note that these aren't necessarily my ten favorite artists, or even the ten I'd call the "best," however that's defined. Instead, these are the ten who I think most influenced the music of the era.

As to specifics, I'd agree that it's debatable whether Dylan was really more influential than Elvis, but that's the way I see it; Mr. Zimmerman really influenced the way songwriters wrote. As to putting Joni Mitchell on the list, while she's obviously not as talented as Dylan and the Beatles, she influenced and inspired several generations of female singer-songwriters. (Without Joni, no Jewell -- which I'll forever hold against her). Same thing for putting Aretha on the list; she inspired the creation of the female vocal diva, which rules to this day. (Without Aretha, no Celene Dion -- again, I hold this against the Queen of Soul.) And the same for Madonna -- I'm not a fan, but it's obvious that Lady Gaga and her ilk are.

I put Phil Spector and Berry Gordy on the list, even though they're not performers, because as producers they strongly influenced the sound of the music of the 60s and beyond. Gordy, of course, helped create the Motown Sound, which led to the Philly Sound, which led to just about all soul and R&B music of the past 50 years. Spector's Wall of Sound influenced everybody from Brian Wilson to Bruce Springsteen to U2, so he gets on the list easy.

The others are fairly self explanatory. The Stones, while not my personal favorites, influenced generations of bad boy rock and rollers, as well as the punk and grunge movements. Chuck Berry pretty much invented rock and roll and defined R&R guitar, so there's no way he's not on there. Dylan, as noted, changed the way songs were written, so he's a given. Then there's the Beatles, who head up any list no matter how it's defined. There was pop music before the Beatles and pop music after the Beatles, and that's just he way it is.

Amateur Hour

I've been responding a bit to a message thread on Elliott Randall's Facebook page about the shift from album purchases to single purchases in the digital era. As I pointed out there, this is the industry coming full circle; for the better part of the 20th century, starting with 78 RPM discs and moving into 45 RPM singles, music was purchased one song at a time. The classic album era of the mid-60s to late-80s or so were actually a historical anomaly. Whether we're talking the Top Forty era or today's iTunes-dominated market, consumers have generally preferred to purchase single tracks instead of whole albums.

One can bemoan this fact, as many do, but it is what it is. When the conversation naturally veers into why  today's consumers prefer purchasing one or two tracks instead of an entire album, one has to recognize the possibility that maybe there are only a few tracks on any given album worth buying. Now, this certainly wasn't the case during the classic album era, when artists conceived an album as a start-to-finish project, but it was the way it was in the Top Forty era before that. Back then, an artist had a hit or two that led off the album, and the rest of the tracks were just filler. I'm not sure it's that different today, and here's why.

Back in the 50s and 60s, and maybe even early 70s, music was made by professionals -- at all points in the process. An artist chose a set of songs written by professional songwriters, then hired a group of professional studio musicians to record them. The recording was made in a professional studio by a professional recording engineer, and the whole process was overseen by a professional record producer. The results were, not surprisingly, uniformly professional.

Today, however, there aren't a lot of professionals in the process, especially when you're talking about the typical indie recording. First off, all the songs are written by the artist, who is seldom a trained or skilled songwriter. (There are lots of reasons for this self-writing phenomenon, including money -- in the form of songwriting royalties -- and artistic hubris.) The artist plays the music himself, and if it isn't quite as good as the studio pros might have done it, it can always be touched up in Pro Tools. Needless to say, the artist does his own recording, typically in his own "home studio" (re: basement or bedroom), and serves as his own recording engineer and producer. There are no professionals anywhere in the loop to add that extra touch or refinement, and no outsiders period to do any editing or provide useful feedback.

The result is, more often than not, a self-indulgent, amateurish mess. Today's typical album contains too many songs (you can put 70+ minutes on a CD, so you might as well fill them all up) that, frankly, aren't all that listenable. Oh, today's computer recording technology can put a nice sheen on the thing, but the underlying songs are dreadfully dull and unmusical, and the recorded performances uninspiring. Without valuable professional input at all stages, the resulting product just isn't as good as similar recordings made decades ago.

Given the substandard quality songs, performances, and recordings common today, it shouldn't be surprising that the average indie album sells fewer than 2,000 copies (according to Billboard; Soundscan pegs it closer to 500 units). This also may explain why consumers buy just one or two tracks piecemeal from an album. There isn't that much that's worth spending money on; maybe there's a good track or two, but the rest is filler, at best.

Before anybody gets their knickers in a bunch, of course there are exceptions to this. There are lots of musicians who have the innate talent to produce quality music in today's do-it-yourself environment -- but there are lots more who don't. All you have to do is listen to enough new music today, and you'll see what I mean.

I value the contribution that professional songwriters, musicians, engineers, and producers can bring to the table. I wish there were more of it. It's certainly worth considering that the declining quality -- and sales -- of music today could be reversed with a little more professional input.

But that's just my opinion. Reasonable minds may disagree.

Windows 8 for Digital Music Playback

So, how good is Windows 8 for playing music? It all depends.

First of all, if you're a Windows Media Center fan, know that WMC isn't included in the basic build of Windows 8. Microsoft figured not enough people used it to warrant adding the costs for all the codecs into the basic version of Windows, and thus made WMC an optional and extra component to the Win8 Pro version. You can easily add the Media Center pack from within Win8, for a negligible cost (rumored to be in the $10-$15 range), but it's still an add-on, not part of the core operating system.

Even if you add the Media Center pack, know that you can't boot Win8 directly into WMC, as you can with all previous versions of Windows. Microsoft is so damned hell bent on forcing the Metro tiled Start screen experience on everyone that you can't bypass it, not even to go into Media Center. This is close to a deal killer for anyone using Windows in the living room; you don't want to have to mouse and click to the WMC environment, you just want Media Center to be there when you boot up and all the time after. It's a real kick in the ass for music lovers, HTPC enthusiasts, and anyone trying to use their computer as part of an audio/video system.

That said, you can reprogram your universal remote to click your way through the damned Start screen and launch Media Center. From there it's the same Media Center you're used to -- really, the exact same one, since Microsoft effectively killed all future WMC development with the Windows 7 version. If you like what you got now, that's fine.

That said, the Metro-style Music app built into Windows 8 (being rebranded as "Xbox Music" as we speak) may be a good-enough solution for many music lovers. The Win8 Music app looks and feels a lot like the Music component of WMC, and offers much of the same functionality. And, believe it or not, the touch-enabled Metro interface functions pretty well as a ten-foot interface, too. It's all those big tiles that work great on tablets; they work great at a ten-foot distance, too.

Viewing your digital music library with Windows 8's Music app.

Playing a track in Windows 8 -- looks a lot like Windows Media Center.

So, should you use Windows 8 for your digital music needs? Maybe. Try the built-in Music app to see if it fits your needs, and if it does, great. If not, you can always add Windows Media Center back into the mix, even if you can't launch directly into the WMC home screen. That said, WMC's days are obviously numbered, so some sort of ten-foot interface replacement will be needed eventually.