Ian McKee

‘The consumerisation of IT’ is an established trend, as consumer technology is advancing so swiftly it’s having some interesting affects on enterprise tech. Tablet devices, smartphones, social networks and BYOD are forcing exciting things to happen to business computing and causing a few headaches for IT managers and CIOs.

But IT is not the only industry that these technologies are having an affect.

A year and a half ago, Damon Albarn creating an album on an iPad was seen as gimmicky. It is pretty easy to see a lot of what Damon Albarn gets up to as gimmicky, but I happen to believe that most of his prolific output is in earnest. This is a man who wrote an critically acclaimed opera about a cartoon monkey, after all. So I had a hunch that there may be something in this endeavour beyond a headline.

Some of the negativity came down to one thing.

“Making music on an iPad? It’s too easy.”

It really irks me that there are musicians, or anyone, who thinks that anything to do with music making can be ‘too easy’. The worst kind are generally Dream Theater fans. There can be a certain thrill in witnessing virtuoso musicianship, but music is not a sport, it should not be judged on speed or dexterity or the number of time signature changes you can cram into a 20 minute epic. It should be judged as art, capacity to evoke emotions and thought.

Playing is one thing, but it makes even less sense to think that music production should be hard. Ableton Live is widely praised by music production pros for being user friendly. My own experience is that it is easier to pick up than some other ‘pro’ tools (including Pro Tools). It actually doesn’t do exactly the job I was originally looking for in production software, but I find I come back to just because it’s more intuitive.

It’s still not exactly simple though. I’ve watched many a video tutorial, played around for hours and am still aware I’m only scratching the surface of the software’s capabilities.

The reason these tools are complicated is presumably not because the makers of Reason and Cubase want a high barrier for entry, it’s simply that professionals want a lot of features, and with features come complications. It is a trade off, but to think that a piece of software (or to use the ‘consumerised’ term, an app) being easy to use denigrates the artistry of the musical output somehow seems belligerent.

Uniqueness 

So multitudinousness of features is something that the many music making apps that are coming out have to contend with, and the majority seem to be dealing with it simply by dedicating themselves to one thing. DM1 is a drum machine, it does that job well but does not try to also be your MIDI controller or composer. Sketch Synth lets you play with samples in fun ways, but it’s not about to replace Ableton Live.

For me these apps are contending with a bigger issue. GarageBand is the one iPad app I can think of that tries to do more than one thing. It’s a tool for recording, arranging, playing; the whole music creation process.

Of course GarageBand is the daddy of making music production consumer friendly. But I remember learning that the beat on Rhianna’s Umbrella was a GarageBand loop and thinking ‘well, I’m not going to be using GarageBand then’. Not because I’m not a Rhianna fan (I’m not, but Umbrella is a choon) but because I thought if music media were making a big deal out of this then it’s clearly not the done thing.

And this is where it starts to get complicated. Even on the iPad GarageBand does a pretty great job of giving you ways to create unique sounds, and there is the capacity to import from elsewhere, but ultimately the majority of consumers are always going to go back to the loop library and construct tracks from bits and pieces that either they haven’t made or that the software has auto-generated.

Even when you’re importing from elsewhere, how much unique input do you have to put into something to make it truly original? If you’re importing a drum loop from another app, does it matter that the kick sound is the same as thousands of other people’s kick sound?

This means that to some degree the music is going to be the aural equivalent of buying a shirt from Topshop. Nice and everything, but likely to be the same or similar to what someone else is wearing to the party.

Portability

When I bought my Tascam Porta 02 four track recorder as a teenager I thought ‘this is it, I’m going to be recording music everywhere I go‘. I’m not saying it was false advertising, the Porta 02 was reasonably portable, but the fact you had to plug a microphone or instrument into it to record anything means I wasn’t likely to create a jazz odyssey on the train.

I thought the same when I bought my first MacBook Pro, but somehow save for a couple of three hour train rides to Bristol, it seemed just little bit too much effort.

The iPad, however, seems to be the solution needed. A half hour on the train with a couple of music making apps and I can be well on the way to creating something. Whether it is any good is another question, but something.

Price

An iPad still isn’t cheap (yet), but compare the cost to most musical instruments and it’s reasonable. Especially considering music making is far from the iPad’s sole or primary purpose.

Setting aside hardware, from a software perspective the app ecosystem has had an affect on economic models similar to those in gaming. Just as you can now pay £4.99 for practically the same game you would pay £50 for on a console, you’re unlikely to pay over £5 for a music creation app whilst most pro music software will set you back at least £100. Features be damned, that makes for a good trade off.

Music making converging with music consumption

I have two different folders on both my iPad and iPhone for music listening and music making, but this appears to be an antiquated distinction. In the App Store and Google Play they are one and the same. Which makes sense, as the line is increasingly blurred. Apps like the aforementioned Sketch Synth encourage you to experiment with given sounds, you’re being creative when you use it, but it’s not intended for creation so much as entertainment.

Then there are interesting experiments with this crossover area from mainstream artists, like Bjork’s much hyped Biophilia. An artist’s creation, but one created with the expectation that the listener (user? co-creator?) interacts with the sounds.

There’s no doubt that this trend is exciting, and I’m looking forward to the day when you can create an entire album of original material on a device you can hold in one hand without being called a poser. A certain amount of snobbery needs to disappear from music, and as music creation becomes easier there will be more music, which inevitably means more bad music. But this just means we need more filters in order to get more brilliant music.

(Grand Sounds 53/366 by ErminCelikovic)

This post was originally published on the EML Wildfire Tech PR blog.

The early onset of Summer (it’s still March?!) has got me all in the mood for the kind of tunes that befit a later sunset. This set of songs is what I predict will be sound tracking my sunshine season, and darn well should yours. Which means it is a mix of new tracks, but there’s a few in there that are just in my (or general) consciousness for whatever reason.

As it is indeed still March, and a bit early to be predicting Summer soundtracks, I will continue to add to this playlist, so feel free to subscribe.

Summer 2012 on Spotify

Rustie – After Light
I wasn’t quite open to Glass Swords when I heard it, I appreciate that we live in a genre leaping age and demonstration of hopping through so many was exactly a mark of greatness. My attention span is pretty shot to bits, but even I, I thought, couldn’t quite deal with this. This track, however, mostly sticks to a kind of bouncy house. Not unlike what you’d hear at a beach bar in Ibiza, just a bit more interesting.

I Break Horses – Winter Beats
I know! How very contrary of me to put a song with ‘Winter’ in the title on a Summer playlist! I am whacky like that. But seriously, ignore the title, this is a proper feel good wave of synths type Summer song.

NZCA/LINES – Compass Points
Metronomy soundtracked last Summer, and seeing as they probably won’t release another album this yer they’ve got their, um, ex bassist’s brother to fill in for them. The link may be tenuous, but the sound is not. Check out the rest of the self titled album – as marvellously weird and tuneful as The English Riviera.

Submerse – Move On
Being contrary again. Put a song with the sound of rain on it. Sounds like summery rain though, which I associate strongly with British Summer for some reason. Then some ace soulful two step beats.

M83 – New Map
I thought I couldn’t get tired of Midnight City. I couldn’t, but I thought I better give one of the other tracks a go.

Cloud Nothings – Stay Useless
The closest thing to what Cloud Nothings used to do (fuzzy indie pop) on their new album. Considering I like what Cloud Nothings do now (angry post punk) more, it may seem strange that I’d include this. But, well, angry post punk isn’t very summery.

Woman’s Hour – Jenni
We should definitely have got bored of Afro-guitaring by indie bands by now. Turns out we haven’t, as long as they do it nicely.

The Maccabees – Went Away
OK, so not massively original, but this album has been so huge that it’s going to be listened to by a lot of people a lot of times this Summer. I say embrace this.

Eight and a Half – Go Ego
I don’t know a lot about this one, except that I heard it on a playlist by Sean from DiS. It’s new though. You probably feel a bit cheated, don’t you?

Phantogram – Don’t Move
See above. Sorry.

Pretty Lights – Drift Away
This isn’t new, but it is new to me and is perfect Summer audio food.

College & Electric Youth – A Real Hero
This isn’t new either. In fact it was released in 2010. And you probably listened to it ages ago because you saw Drive and thought ‘oh that’s a nice song’ and then listened to it a million times back in September or something. But I have only just seen Drive because I’m a terrible laggard so I’ll be listening to it all Summer, and see no reason why you shouldn’t do so too.

After the first song of Laura Marling’s set (The Muse) she explained that her 14 year old self would be high-fiving her right now, as Colston Hall was where she watched her first gig. A shout from the audience asked who it was. The reply, Ryan Adams, initiated laughter among the crowd.

I can only assume that the laughter was due to what I assume was always Ryan Adams’ biggest problem with breaking the UK – it is quite hard to realise someone is not saying Bryan. I couldn’t tell when Marling said it either, but assumed Bryan Adams would have been playing bigger venues than Colston Hall when she was 14 (only 8 years ago) and that she was more likely to be a fan of the musician without a ‘B’. This was confirmed when she later played a cover of My Winding Wheel, a better song than Bryan could ever come within a 20 mile radius of.

I mention this because it made something click for me. Laura Marling is generally considered part of the nu-folk movement in the UK, her music often related back to English folk. To me the fact that Ryan Adams was her first gig is telling, and during the course of the evening became more apparent to me – Laura Marling is far more Americana and alt-country than she is Olde English. Tracks like Night After Night on the latest album, and Goodbye England (Covered in Snow) from the previous might be ‘folk’, but most of what I heard was very much from the other sound of the Atlantic. Not least her voice, which seems to become increasingly American deep south when singing live.

None of which is a complaint. The set list probably included more of the Americana style stuff as that’s what happens to be a bit more lively, and that’s what’s needed in a relatively large venue like Colston Hall. Laura Marling isn’t the most animated of performers, but the set itself was surprisingly rousing. Her voice is so strong, switches between low and high registers so freely, with more than a little Joni Mitchell in there. The solo acoustic moments were not necessary to show this either – even with a masterful full band playing behind her, her voice pushes right through. I’m not the first to say that it sounds strange coming from some a small and young.

But then, in the week that I first heard the term ‘The Adele Gap‘ (size of the difference between a singer’s speaking and singing voice), Laura Marling’s doesn’t seem huge in one sense. She sounds just as mature when she talks – very much an old head on young shoulders.

Then again, she also sounds very English when she speaks.

Image: DanielMackie_

Cloud Nothings’ new record makes me enormously happy. Not because it is an enormously happy record (quite the reverse is true), or even that it is an enormously good record (it is good, but not that good). Let me explain.

There are two essential ingredients for making good music; innovation and emotion. And in my opinion innovation is merely a conduit to emotion – it doesn’t sound believable if it sounds too much like something else, as if you’re aping another sound you can’t be being genuine.

Recently there has been another hubbub around the idea that guitar music is dead. The death of guitar music is usually cited as being due to a lack of innovation. There are only so many chord patterns and riffs you can get out of a six string instrument. Has anyone considered that the perceived decline is actually due to a lack of emotional guitar music? That the lack in innovation is in fact cause of the real problem – no one means it anymore. The countless blues, surf and pop rock revivalists sound boring not because they sound like copyists, but because sounding like copyists makes them sound like they have no soul.

Cloud Nothings’ previous two records are exactly that. Fuzzy pop punk that so many music writers like to call charmingly shambolic. I’ve never understood this, why does bad production equal charm? With Steve Albini on production duties Attack on Memory was never going to appeal to the bedroom recording fetishists, but that is not the main reason why this record is so infinitely better than the prior ones.

The chief reason is that Dylan Baldi and his band now mean it. Baldi explained that when they set out with this record, he realised that they hadn’t been making the music that they actually liked or listened too. So that’s what they did. It means that this isn’t the most innovative record ever (more on the influences later), but it’s just different enough for the emotion to pour through.

Which is why this record makes me so happy. It is stacked with emotions, all of them, from happiness to sadness to pure unadulterated anger and angst. Which is what makes me happiest. Anger and angst have become distinctly unfashionable emotions in music in the last 10 years or so, somehow we’ve let the metalheads have almost exclusive rights to use of anger in music, and they never really did it very well. Back in the mid to late ’90s and early ’00s there were some bands who did it very well; Jawbreaker, Braid, Far. But somehow emo got polished into a pile of terrible cheesey pop punk which was marketable to teenagers (Taking Back Sunday, My Chemical Romance, 30 Seconds from Mars) and being emotional in guitar music became an understandably heinous crime.

Which is why Baldi’s screams of ‘no future, no past’ on Attack’s opening track sound to me like someone has hit rewind, erased the crimes of the last 10 years and picked up where the bands on Dischord, Jade Tree and Deep Elm were heading 10 years ago and brought it to a mainstream audience by way of making two fuzzy pop punk albums to gain attention before getting to the good stuff. I just hope that they continue to mean it.

Once I’d seen some other albums of the year lists, I thought “hmm, there are a lot of albums here that are what I’ve been listening too, I don’t really need to bother doing my own.”

There were a few anomalies. PJ Harvey’s Let England Shake, for instance, I regard as ludicrously overrated. Lyrically it’s intelligent (and so much has been said about the timeliness of the themes, but do we really believe Harvey predicted the riots?) but musically it is very staid. If Radiohead released an album that sounded like that, the world would release a collective yawn. OK that’s not true the world would fawn over them too, I’m just trying to make the point that musically it’s not inventive.

Anyway, onto being positive. Once I actually started to think about the albums I’ve been listening to this year, I realised there were actually quite a few which were strangely absent from other lists. Either my musical taste is more individual than I’d realised, or some critics have been a bit lax (in the case of some, January releases probably haven’t helped). I’ll point out the albums which seem under represented, as really those are the records that prompted me to bother doing this list at all.

20. Battles – Gloss Drop

When I first heard Ice Cream I knew I was in for a treat. (Treat = ice cream, yeah, geddit?!)

Battles – Gloss Drop on Spotify

19. Fucked Up – David Comes to Life

A hardcore punk rock opera concept album? YES PLEASE. Actually I would have said no thanks but I heard it before I realised what it was, and it’s ace.

Fucked Up – David Comes to Life on Spotify

18. Twin Atlantic – Free

I like Frightened Rabbit, Biffy Clyro and the occasional bit of cheesy-emo-pop. So why wouldn’t I like this?

Twin Atlantic – Free on Spotify

17. The Appleseed Cast – Sagarmartha

Don’t quite understand why these guys are still overlooked, as per my recent review of their 2000 album Mare Vitalis. This is more instrumental than usual, but every bit the slab of post-rock goodness as Mogwai’s latest offering.

The Appleseed Cast – Sagarmartha on Spotify

16. Gil Scott-Heron & Jamie xx – We’re New Here

Is it bad that I didn’t really get I’m New Here until the bloke out of the xx put lots of shiny dubsteppy glitchy stuff on it? Probably.

Gil Scott-Heron & Jamie xx – We’re New Here on Spotify

15. Cut Copy – Zonoscope

Need I say more than Need You Now? I do? Oh OK. The rest of the albums pretty great too. The best Aussie 80s synth romance pop album of the year.

Cut Copy – Zonoscope on Spotify

14. Wild Beasts - Smother

Two Dancers was easily my album of 2009. I can’t tell you why Smother didn’t get me in the same way, it’s just colder somehow. Still pretty blooming marvelous though.

Wild Beasts – Smother on Grooveshark

13. Friendly Fires – Pala

Just makes you feel good.

Friendly Fires – Pala on Grooveshark

12. The Decemberists – The King is Dead

A January release means everyone’s forgotten about this. The Decemberists dropped the prog and focused on their always bloody brilliant songwriting, which has the opportunity to shine in this relatively simple folk rock record.

The Decemberists – The King is Dead

11. Yuck – Yuck

Not the most innovative album of the year, you normally need to do a bit more than sound a lot like a band of the past (in this case Dinosaur Jr) to win my affection, but for some reason I found myself listening to this over and over.

Yuck – Yuck on Spotify

10. Little Dragon – Ritual Union

Why is this not higher in other lists, huh? Why? Understated, unassuming but soulful electro-R&B from Sweden, with occasional dubstep inflections and a vocalist who also appeared on the Sbtrkt album, this should be a shoe in for high positions. But it’s December and I appear to be the only person still backing it.

Little Dragon – Ritual Union on Spotify

9. The Antlers – Burst Apart

I came late to this one. Really late. In fact I’ve only listened to it properly since I saw it topped DiS and The Fly’s year end lists. It’s really, really beautiful.

The Antlers – Burst Apart on Spotify

8. Bombay Bicycle Club – A Different Kind of Fix

Another album I’ve been surprised not to see in more lists. Released at the end of August, being an early one can’t be the reason. I reckon it’s a combination of Bombay Bicycle Club’s prolificacy (three albums in three years, all good ones too) and a kind of snobbishness that they’re a depressingly young band who get Radio 1 airplay. There are some dazzling moments on this album, not least single Shuffle, which (try as Radio 1 and Xfm might) cannot be overplayed. One of those rare songs that does the spine-tingling-makes-it-all-OK-again thing.

Bombay Bicycle Club – A Different Kind of Fix on Spotify

7. Jay Z & Kanye West – Watch the Throne

A vanity project? The very definition of. But done with such aplomb that even I (a man who likes his musicians with a slice of humble pie) am unable to resist. Somehow, a vanity project from two of the vainest men on the planet makes for serious fun. Maybe next time they should get Cristiano Ronaldo and Robbie Williams to make guest appearances.

Jay Z & Kanye West – Watch the Throne on Spotify

6. Radiohead – The King of Limbs

I am one of those annoying obsessive Radiohead fans. Sorry. I do believe that OK Computer is the Greatest Album of All Time (it is, they’ve done tests). There was a time when any albums of the year list would be topped by Radiohead in a Radiohead album year. But not so this year.

When In Rainbows was released, of course there was the hubbub about how, but I really felt it was one of Radiohead’s greatest – the sound of a band who had learnt to relax. I’m not sure if that was retracted or exacerbated on The King of Limbs. It’s a tense record, taut like Amnesiac, indicating they had thought a bit too hard, but lacking in tunes indicating that they actually hadn’t. I know, I know, “you listened to Radiohead expecting tunes?!” But there were tunes on In Rainbows. The King of Limbs’ focus is on rhythms, it’s the first album where Phil Selway and Colin Greenwood are possibly the most important members. Which is good, and why the album’s still in at 6, but it’s not perfect. Thom and co. – do that, and remember to write some tunes, and you’ll have another OK Computer on your hands.

Radiohead – The King of Limbs on Spotify

5. Metronomy – The English Riviera

I’ve probably said all I can about this one here.

Metronomy – The English Riviera on Spotify

4. M83 – Hurry Up We’re Dreaming

I debated placing this so highly as it is patchy, at best. Doesn’t need to be a double album. To be honest I could probably count the number of times I’ve listened to it from start to finish on one hand. A few songs are good, but DEAR GOD are they good. Midnight City has to be the Song of the Year. I’m not even the biggest anthemic synth-pop fan, but this just smacks everything MGMT ever recorded out of the park (incidentally, MGMT’s Oracular Spectacular didn’t even need to be an entire album – double sided single would have done the trick).

Now all we need is for someone to make the modern day Breakfast Club so this can play out the end credits.

M83 – Hurry Up We’re Dreaming on Spotify

3. Ghostpoet – Peanut Butter Blues & Melancholy Jam

My highest ranking album which I’m surprised not to see in more year end lists, especially given it was a Mercury nominee. Victim of a January release, I suppose. Or maybe the impossibility of pigeon holing this album means it is hard to find an audience to champion it. It’s received great reviews and acclaim, but not being clearly hip-hop, dubstep or indie, no one scene has taken it in as their own. As you can see from this list, being a little bit hip-hop, dubstep and indie suits me just fine.

Ghostpoet - Peanut Butter Blues & Melancholy Jam on Spotify

2. Sbtrkt – SBTRKT

It’s an easy listen, yes, but there’s intelligence, emotion and invention in this. The album which James Blake could have made, it’s the closest thing to a perfect post-dubstep record we’ve seen yet. What I find most amazing is the breadth of guest vocalists on there do not stop it from sounding like a cohesive record. Unlike Magnetic Man’s self titled last year, which although fantastic, sounded like a huge mound of individually great songs. That’s the sign of really great production.

Sbtrkt – SBTRKT on Spotify

1. Bon Iver – Bon Iver

No, not a controversial choice at number one, but for me there is no question that this album deserves the number one slot. For Emma, Forever Ago was my favourite album of 2008, and Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy last year’s in no small part due to penultimate Justin Vernon assisted track Lost in the World. So my top music lists have been quite Vernon/Bon Iver dominated recently.

I didn’t quite comprehend the beauty of this album at first. It may have taken repeated listens, but I’m not sure I would have given it those repeated listens until I read an amazing review of the album on The Liminal, which serves to draw out the intricacies, emotion and attention to detail that make this one of the greatest albums of our time. An example of how great writing can turn you onto great music.

Bon Iver – Bon Iver on Spotify

The Appleseed Cast’s debut, The End of the Ring Wars, is often included on lists of classic late 90s emo and indie rock, alongside the likes of The Promise Ring, Sunny Day Real Estate, Mineral, Jawbreaker and Braid. It’s this, their second record, though that really reached towards greatness beyond the majority of what any of these peers achieved.

The philosophy on this record was a kind of instrumental socialism – no instrument is more important than any other, including the vocals. All contribute to the common goal of texture and melody. The result is a lush record where the guitars are as percussive as the drums are melodic, Christopher Crisci’s vocals emotional but somehow drawn back, not fully accessible.

The idea would be expanded on tenfold in the subsequent double volume albums Low Level Owl (Volumes I & II), with Mare Vitalis staying closer to ‘real songs’, as opposed to the further movement towards post rock expansiveness and experimentation the Appleseed Cast took on for the subsequent project.

It would be difficult to find a song where all instruments convene so perfectly to achieve melody as on Fishing the Sky, the staccato bass line as important as the arpeggiating guitars, which are just as likely to chime as the cymbal splashes from the masterful drumming. Forever Longing the Golden Sunsets is just about the most emo a song title could ever get, but the track itself is a demonstration in loud/quiet/loud perfection where (unlike many other purveyors of the format, even the well respected ones) it is far from just the distortion pedal that provides the differentiation.

This album stands up against the best post rock ever made – easily more beautiful and considered than Mogwai. I can only imagine that the ‘emo’ tag is what’s prevented it from becoming better known.

I’m surprised at the lack of transparency there is about what Spotify pays artists. As someone with music available on Spotify, I’m a bit miffed at why more people haven’t been more open about it.

However, in an example of someone being very open about it, a tweet from (really rather good) electronic artist and King Creosote collaborator Jon Hopkins today caused a bit of a stir -

Got paid £8 for 90,000 plays. Fuck spotify.

199 retweets, far and away the most Jon’s ever had. I’d suggest the reason behind people’s interest in this is because of the usual lack of openness about what Spotify pay, the tweet offered a little insight. I have to take issue though.

I don’t know what label Jon’s on, or who his distributors are, but he seems to be seeing a much less favourable rate of return than my band is. It’s on a much smaller scale, but the 250 plays we’ve had on Spotify to date have made us £1.26. So we’re not about to buy that private jet either, but where Jon made about 0.009p per play, we’ve made about 0.5p, 55 times the amount.

Why the difference?

My band used an online music distributor called ditto music (who I heartily recommend by the way) to get our music on Spotify and iTunes. We filled in an online form, paid a nominal sum, agreed to some terms and conditions, uploaded our file and were away. We keep all of the rights and earn all of the royalties (not that there are much) so what we get paid is what Spotify and iTunes pay. There is no limit to what you can earn through this model – if we were getting 90,000 plays on Spotify, I can only assume we would be paid around £450 according to the rate we’re currently paid.

So where’s Jon’s £442 gone? My guess – his label and/or distributor. This is where the whole issue of digital music services gets fuzzy. I thought the same thing reading Pete Townshend’s comments about iTunes recently. Accusing iTunes of not supporting musical talent (try explaining that to any artist who has been plucked out of obscurity and made iTunes Single of the Week), he also claimed they don’t pay well enough. Which is ludicrous – I’m defending Spotify here but I would happily laud iTunes, who pay out nearly 80% of all the revenues they make, which are significantly more than Spotify’s. Pete should not be throwing accusations at iTunes, he should be asking his label questions.

The problem is what happens to that revenue after it has been paid out. If it goes direct to the artist, as it does with my band’s music, then happy days. It seems that if there are middle men involved, well, some people don’t seem to think there is enough money to go around. To my mind, this does not represent a problem with the digital download or streaming models, it represents a problem with the music industry model.

Buy Vs Rent

The other issue with all of the accusations and derision laid on Spotify’s payment model, is that it is always compared to download services like iTunes, when they are patently not the same thing.

Firstly, there seems to be an assumption that every song that is listened to on Spotify equates to a lost sale. It’s the same mistake that the music industry makes looking at illegal downloads, just because I am listening to something on Spotify does not mean that I would buy it. Personally, Spotify has made my musical listening eminently more experimental. Where I would buy a record I know I’m going to like, I listen to stuff on Spotify based on the vaguest recommendation, because I have nothing to lose. The majority of what I listen to on their service I would never consider spending money on, and what I would consider spending money on, is often because I’ve heard it on Spotify.

Secondly, if I download a song from iTunes, I own it. That data file is mine, forever, the same way a CD or a vinyl record would be mine if I walked into a shop and handed over cash for it.

I do not own any of the music I listen on Spotify, I pay a monthly fee in order to have access to it, while others dutifully listen to and occasionally click paid for adverts in lieu of payment. That doesn’t sound like ownership to me,that sounds like rental. I am very aware that if Spotify ever decides to shut up shop, I won’t have access to all that music any more. Much like living in a rented flat. Say you’re living in a £300,000 flat, you would expect to pay maybe £1,000 a month in rent. That’s 0.3%, so 0.2% less than Spotify pay artists for the music they are renting out.

Another good (probably better) analogy, which was suggested to me by Donald Strachan, would be libraries and authors. Authors are paid a minimal sum (a PLR) as their books are borrowed from libraries. Someone who borrows a bool from a library does not then own that book, and (unlike with music we borrow on Spotify) they are highly unlikely to then go and buy the same book from a shop.

So, authors must be pretty pissed off about this, right? They’re probably all campaigning to get libraries shut down!

Erm, no. Quite the opposite.

Another example of cash from plays

In a brilliant bit of PR for YouTube this week, we learned that the family behind the viral video Charlie Bit my Finger have made themselves a tidy £120,000 off of it. Coverage has been pretty unanimously positive – “look, you can make money from posting a video online!”

Now, there’s a separate argument about the artistic merit of making a record like OK Computer vs plonking your toddlers in front of a handy cam and pressing record, but everyone seems to think the family had a good deal here, and as they are both content streaming formats I think YouTube and Spotify are pretty comparable. Like Spotify, you have access to the content on YouTube, but you do not own any of it. So let’s break down the dosh the family made – 4 million views made them £120,000, which converts to  roughly 0.03p per video play – again, significantly less than Spotify pay out.

If there’s music you care about, you should of course make sure that you buy it – not only to support the artist but also so you own it, for your own piece of mind. But that is not the service that Spotify provides.

If you are an artist, Spotify are not selling your music, they’re just lending it to people, and for that they’re actually paying you a pretty good rate – better than you would get for renting a flat you own, or libraries would pay you for a book you wrote, or if you were trying to make ad revenue off your videos on YouTube. Unless, of course, your label’s taking all the cash.

Seeing as it is inevitable before this post is done, I’m going to come right out and say it up front: Mumford & Sons. For a number of years so called nu-folk movement was trundling along happily outside of the limelight, I could unashamedly listen to Frightened Rabbit, My Latest Novel and Laura Marling and when asked what kind of music they played I could say yes, it is folk. Well, folk-y. Alt-folk. With (almost) zero embarrassment.

And then blasted Mumford & Sons had to go and ruin it for everyone. Now if I try to explain how great Frightened Rabbit are to a non-muso the answer is always “oh, so like Mumford & Sons?”

“NO. Not like that abomination to the acoustic guitar.”

Stornoway have possibly suffered more from this phenomenon than any other band, as they didn’t even have a heritage prior to the Mumfordocalypse. Their sole album thus far is also, it has to be said, a bit twee. The kind of twee that could have been gotten away with had the discerning music buying public been careful to avoid being caught liking the next Mumford, but they were. Beachcomber’s Windowsill just involved a few too many jangly sounding guitars, rollicking choruses and affected vocals for too many people to risk listening to it in the current climate.

So it was with trepidation that I went along to Somerset House. A summery evening in a beautiful setting, even if the music was going to be a bit on the dainty side, the settings should melt away my scepticism.

And so it was. But surprisingly, the music was not all that quaint. The quite charmingly shambolic nature of the band on record disappeared, and the songs felt so much more robust. Even Brian Biggs’ vocals, which can sound wilfully nasal and, well, ‘folky’, sounded not only genuine, but really strong. He managed to be both the shy indie front man and commander of the show.

Just as well really, as there was quite a bit that needed commanding. This was Stornoway’s biggest show to date, and they’d made more than an effort to live up to the occasion. A small orchestra joined them on stage for the second half of the set, adding (or perhaps just bringing to light) depth in the songs from Beachcomber’s Windowsill not apparent before. A beautiful clarinet led intro to Zorbing during their encore was a particular highlight.

As the nu-folk march shows no signs of stopping, it was apparent from this evening that not only had Stornoway been quite unfairly overlooked, they have a lot more to give. There were moments which were Mumfordesque – a moving group vocal session around a single mic during the encore was what I can only imagine the Mumfords were attempting at the Brits – but these only showed Stornoway’s superiority. The strength of the new material showed that there could be a real hope that we don’t have to mention the M word any more in a few months too.

The Somerset House series was sponsored by American Express* as part of their Preferred Seating programme.

*Disclosure: in RL, I work in PR, and attended the gig as a media host on behalf of American Express. Why that would influence how I’d write up Stornoway though, I don’t know.

So, here I am. A music blogger blogging about Metronomy. How very original. But @LisbonExile asked me what I thought of the new album, and I figured that was as good a reason as any to update my sorely under attended blog.

Another reason would be that @LisbonExile was the first person to play me any Metronomy. Black Eye / Burnt Thumb sounded to me then like some kind of warped synth based apocalypse. Not knowing anything more about the band, I assumed it must be some fresh ridiculousness from France that East Londoners were pretending to like. Of course, I came around quickly. A couple more listens and I realised this was silly, yes, but such glorious, angry and sublime silliness.

That combination of emotion, earnestness with a tinge of the ridiculous is where Metronomy’s music lives. From first album Pip Paine (Pay me the £5000 You Owe) to the last, Nights Out, the absurd was dialed down and the emotion dialed up. That journey continues on The English Riviera, an album which is as often heart breaking as it is likely to make you smile. Girl/boy duet Everything Goes My Way, reminiscent of The Postal Service’s Nothing Better, is the natural progression from Heartbreaker, another part of the story. Elsewhere, on The Bay, some aggression comes through too.

But always, there is that ever present sense of playing. It’s there in The Bay’s funky bass line, the fiddly three time guitars in the chorus of Trouble, the synth line in The Look. It’s this strand of (dare I say) English quirkiness that make Metronomy stand out from your Phoenix or Postal Services. If it doesn’t make them a ‘better’ band, it does give them more personality.

The English Riviera is a more commercial album than it’s predecessors, there’s no doubt of that, and Metronomy can barely be called an electro band any more. Live drums and guitars are as often heard on this album as anything more digital. It’s the kind of drift chart-wards that will put off the East Londoners who used to go and see them in Cargo. But I will always have sympathy for the band who choose not to make album after album of barely distinguishably different music stylistically (Foo Fighters, I am looking at you) so I don’t begrudge them this. I am certain, if The Look had been my first introduction to the band then I would not have had the same reaction to it, I would instantly have liked it. But that is not a bad thing, the foundations Metronomy laid with their first album are a core part of what makes them them, but then there are more tunes, more substance, and more emotion in The English Riviera than you will find on the two previous records.

My rating: 4/5

Listen to The English Riviera on Spotify

One hit wonders come and go, artists with only one song that gains commercial success. They’re usually novelty acts, or just not brilliant artists with one novelty track. More unexplainable, though, is those artists who have one song that just outstrips the rest of their material by such a stretch that it is enough to place them in the pantheon of the great, on the basis of that one song. Bands who are OK, not brilliant but not bad, but who have one song that is just amazing.

I’m not sure why this happens. Part of what I’m trying to do with this blog is write about music from the perspective of being a musician, as it should mean I can explain some things that happen in music that others can’t. This is not a phenomenon I can explain – surely, if a band is capable of writing a song as blisteringly awesome as the Rat, they should be able to do it again. But with genius like this, lightening often does not strike twice.

If I’m honest, I’ve forced myself to complete a playlist of ten here, it was a bit of a struggle and I got some help from @Phil_Reilly and @elletricote, but not every song here is as pure an example of the concept as I would have hoped. I shall explain as I go.

1. The Rat – The Walkmen

The best example of That One Song, this is up there in my top five favourite songs of all time, yet everything else the Walkmen have ever recorded is decidedly average. This is such a good example, that when I requested contributions on Twitter, this was the first suggestion.

2. Percussion Gun – White Rabbits

This was the song that led me to think this might be a phenomenon confined to Strokesish New York aggressive indie bands. It’s not, as the rest of this playlist will go one to demonstrate, but White Rabbits are strangely similar to the Walkmen in many ways. I suppose it can be just one element of a song that elevates it from ‘good’ to ‘great’, and here it is the drums. If you are a great songwriter, you often write great songs, but if you just once came up with a fantastic beat it’s less likely to happen again.

3. Circle, Square, Triangle – Test Icicles

This was in the last playlist, and I mentioned doing this one. There was only one album, so perhaps less chance for us to see if the greatness could have been repeated, but this track just stands out on the album. It might be unfair to compare it to Dev Hynes’ other material as Lightspeed Champion due to the diversion of geres, but y’know, I’m gonna. This aggressive ode to over indulgence that makes his Bright Eyes aping solo stuff pale in comparison.

4. Sweet Disposition – The Temper Trap

Again, a little unfair to stick a band in that have only had one album, more so considering that it was fairly recently and unlike Test Icicles they are still very much a band. But, what can I say? This early U2-esque epic has been overplayed for a reason. I’ll take it back when the next album has anything even approaching this level of brilliance.

5. Men’s Needs – The Cribs

I want to hate the Cribs. Most of the time it’s not too difficult to. This song should be the epitome of all that I would like to hate – lad rock distilled. But it’s not, it’s the only Cribs song that delivered with an irony and level of emotion to ensure they are above the other indie-also-rans.

6. Shinobi Vs. Dragon Ninja – Lostprophets

OK, I did say artists whose other material is ‘good,’ but not ‘great’, and in this case their other material is ‘atrocious’ and certainly not ‘great’. This song is a guilty pleasure, it does err on the side of nu-metal, but come on, it is fantastically satisfying listening. Why is everything else they’ve recorded so cringe worthy?

7. Movies – Alien Ant Farm

This one’s thanks to @Phil_Reilly. It was a bizarre occurrence, this song, the only reason the band was receiving attention was their Smooth Criminal cover, yet their album shifted a decent number of copies. I remember people telling me at the time that the album was actually quite good, with the anticipation of my surprise. What they really meant was this song was good enough to excuse all the other crimes they had committed against music.

8. Clean – This Beautiful Mess

This playlist is also not about a song that brought the band any commercial success. I have been a fan of this song since I was a sullen a teenager spending for too much time sulking my bedroom, when discovering new music meant listening to the latest emo is awesome compilation from Deep Elm. Whether this is emo is debatable, whether it is awesome, is not. I hadn’t actually tried to listen to any of This Beautiful Mess’ tracks until I came to make this playlist. I can confirm that there although not a bad band, nothing they’ve done since has come close.

9. Crazy – Gnarls Barkley

I can’t believe this hadn’t occurred to me before, it took @elletricote to remind me. The album is consistently good, and subsequent singles were none-too-shabby, but this is one of those tracks that just took over the airwaves in all consuming fashion for all the right reasons.

10. A Tried and Tested Method – The Longcut

Anyone know where these guys have gone? This is another of my favourite songs, and I’ve given the album a few shots – it’s OK. But anyone who does not get a shiver down the spine and the feeling of electricity running through their follicles on ‘HEY!’ is not a real human being.

Listen to the playlist on Spotify here.