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a few questions for music lovers

Started by rick957, August 25, 2011, 09:58:01 PM

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Oniya

I know it helps with bagpipes.  A friend of mine piped at my wedding - he was also capable of playing the didgeridoo.
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
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ejohanson

I'm a huge music nerd! I listen to music at least 12 hours a day, and download a few dozen albums a week.

1:  Do you have favorite musical groups, or do you more have favorite songs, without caring much who the artists are?  If you have favorite musical groups (bands or solo artists), please name a few of them.  If you're willing to rank them by personal preference, all the better.

#1 - Jello Biafra... especially his work with the Dead Kennedys, nomeansno, and the Melvins. He is my conscience, the little voice in the back of my head which helps me evaluate how well I'm doing in life.

#2 - Andrew Jackson Jihad
#3 - Johnny Hobo and the Freight Trains - my favorite homeless-people band (honorable mention: Random Axe)
#4 - A Silver Mt. Zion - Canadian anarcho-prog!
#5 - Manuel de Falla - I enjoy a lot of Flamenco, but his favorite piece of mine is Nights in the Gardens of Spain
#6 - Tiger Army - their cowpunk/psychobilly stuff is pretty great
#7 - Ke$ha - so nihilistic I get contact high. Awesome live shows. I'm 0% facetious.
#8 - Big Freedia - anarcho-tranny bounce. Incredibly fun. Can't recommend highly enough.
#9 - Iggy Pop circa Lust For Life.
#10 - Gucci Mane - I like most people in the Coke Rap subgenre, but Gucci Mane is the most eclectic
#11 - Bela Bartok - great percussive landscapes
#Locals - Purple & Green, DJ Anjali & The Incredible Kid, All The Apparatus, MU, Portland Cello Project

2:  Where do you look to find new songs or new groups to listen to?  For example, do you rely on word of mouth, or a particular radio station/internet site/magazine/TV show, or something else?

I read Pitchfork, 4chan's /mu/sic board, and Last.fm. I go out to see a lot of live local music too.

3:  Do you spend money (directly or indirectly) on the artists or songs you like the most?  Or do you enjoy the music in some way that doesn't require any money to be spent, such as downloading free songs or pirated songs?  Absolutely no judgment here, I really want to know.

I buy vinyl... I have about 400 jazz and blues recordings, ~300 punk and avant garde 45s, many of them splits, and about eighty LPs of 90s gangsta (Dre, Sugar Hill, NWA, Snoop...). If I'm at a show and they're selling vinyl and I like the band I'll usually pick it up. I almost never pay for any other music though.

4 (strictly optional):  How old are you?

30

5 (optional):  Please tell me about any one song or album or musical artist that affected you in a deeply personal way.  Go into as much or as little detail as you like -- I'm interested.

Well I already talked about Jello Biafra above. 'Well Paid Scientist' is almost solely responsible for why I took the academic track and not the corporate one. 'Chickenshit Conformist' and 'Halloween' are constant rebukes to me when I backslide away from my punk ideals.

'Punks With Clean Kitchens' by Evan Greer and 'Up The Punks' by Ghost Mice are on the opposite side of that coin.
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rick957

#102
Besides the survey responses (which have been so incredibly enlightening -- thanks ya'll!), this thread has contained some general discussion about music-related topics, so I thought it would be okay to dump this here.  I was gonna make a new thread for it but then changed my mind.  *shrugs*

Music Industry Myth-busting, or, The Day the Music Died ... for reals


I'm a bit of a music nerd and have had one or two interesting conversations with others at Elliquiy about the state of the music industry.  No beating around the bush here -- my take is extremely negative; as far as I'm concerned, rock and roll died in November of 2005, although it's death throes started long before that.  I don't expect anybody to see that exactly like I do; it's a highly subjective (although well-considered) personal opinion.

What's far less debatable, however, and widely misunderstood, is the cultural and financial freefall that the music industry has been in for about a decade.  Many people don't even believe this has happened, because they hear all the media hype about new technology and assume that musicians are cashing in on it.  That's a total misconception, so far at least.

Anyway, recently I stumbled across by far the single best link I've ever seen to concisely demonstrate the industry's decline, so I wanted to share that for others who might find it interesting:
"Music's New Math:  Pop's old metrics don't matter," from New York Magazine, of all places.

It's short and has lots of pictures and snazzy charts and stuff.  :)  Also the article mentions several recent developments that are quite astonishing (the biggie:  that catalog album sales finally eclipsed new album sales in 2012, for the first time ever).

For any inquisitive link-lovers, here's some more for ya:
"How Much Does a Professional Musician Make in 2012?" by Tom Hawking at Flavorwire (the Grizzly Bear piece from New York is well worth reading too, but it's relatively long);
"Putting Common Assumptions About How Musicians Make Money to the Truthiness Test" from Kristin Thomson at the Future of Music Coalition;
and -- if you've really got some time on your hands and want to get down and dirty with the numbers --
"Mythbusting: Data Driven Answers to Four Common Assumptions About How Musicians Make Money," ibid.

The takeaway from those three links is that the majority of pro musicians -- including people you wouldn't expect, famous bands selling hundreds of thousands of albums -- are solidly middle-class, even though the media makes most pop/rock musicians out to be rich.  The FMC site is a real treasure trove of music industry data I've never seen before or never seen in one place. 

It's not all bad news, and honestly, I learned that there are lots more musicians doing well these days than I previously imagined ... but that's partly because my assumptions were so low.

I'm of the opinion that major media outlets have given the public the impression that the music industry isn't doing too badly.  I find it worrisome that the same corporations that own most of those media companies also own all the remaining major music labels (last I heard at least, it changes so fast) and either own or have close partnerships with the big companies manufacturing gadgets that play music.

Comments, discussion, polite debate are all welcome.  :)  Or more survey responses, if anybody wants to ....