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| notes from underground - societal whispers all the news that print will fit. |
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Wednesday, June 18, 2003 np: drive-by truckers - decoration day i went out music shopping yesterday, as i oft do on release days for good records. i picked up the new drive-by truckers album which is every bit as good as i knew it would be. infused into the obvious southern rock influences is an even more obvious country inflection to some of the softer tracks which benefits them dramatically. for my money, the drive-by truckers are one of america's best bands at the moment. in addition to having the outrageously rare benefit of having three very fine songwriters in their midsts, their live performances are unparalleled. easily stretching into the 2+ hour range on a regular basis. they are a hard working band. and it shows in their recordings as well, which hold almost every bit of intensity that their live shows do. decoration day is by no means the complex, all-encompassing conceptual statement that their prior, two-disc masterpiece southern rock opera was, but it is no less accomplished. next i got the jurassic 5 ep, the last major release of theirs i had yet to purchase. it was their first official release and it would be a lie to say j5 came out anything less than fully formed, the ep bearing their classic sound in full bloom. next was social distortion's self-titled album, supposedly their second best (behind somewhere between heaven and hell), but i think i like it more. those are the only two social d. records i own, but both are fiery roots-rock/punk statements that are easily just as explosive as they were upon their initial release over a decade ago. "ball and chain," "story of my life," a fantastic straight-ahead cover of "ring of fire"..the album is consistant in sound the entire way through. but it's short enough to be nothing but exemplary. finally, i also got the dave brubeck quartet's time out, a classic of jazz that had come highly recommended to me through various sources. i've only gotten through it once thus far but its excellence is obvious from note one. -- now for the focus of today's lecture. radiohead's hail to the theif debuted at number three on the billboard top 200 album chart this week. not their highest debut ever. both kid a and amnesiac charted higher (numbers one and two, respectively), but hail to the theif out sold them both in first week sales, coming in at just over 300,000 copies according to soundscan. why is this important? because it flies directly in the face of what the music industry has been screaming is its number one enemy for the past few years: music piracy. hail to the theif was illegaly available online for nearly 10 weeks before its release. and you better believe that i definitely downloaded it the moment i knew it was out there. so how does something that was available for free two and a half months before its official release still sell 300,000 copies in its first week? well, if you've been reading my blog, you know that i definitely went out and bought a copy myself on opening day. who is it that music piracy is affecting, other than the record companies themselves, and who really cares about them? aside from the rather notable exception of aimee mann, i've yet to notice many critically lauded artists to complain about music downloading. the bottom line is, bands that don't produce solid albums (read: albums with more than two or three good songs on it) are affected. why would i want to pay fifteen plus dollars for three songs? which is why i feel that one of the largest effects on the slide of music sales resides in two categories: a) the utter lack of solid, consistant and well-regarded artists being signed by recording companies and b) the elimination of the sale of singles. in the united kingdom, the release of singles is still a fairly marketable business. but it has almost entirely disappeared from the market here in the u.s. single sales had slid in the years coming up 'til now. with the onset of albums being the most important thing. singles and cds take about the same amount of money to manufacture, obviously. a little bit more for albums, but the markup on an album is much easier to justify. although justifying six dollars for a single still mystifies me. so, if record companies pour all this money into advertising, marketing research, etc..can't they figure out whom it behooves to release singles for as opposed to only albums? bubba sparxx wouldn't be so in a tizzy over declining sales of his decidedly mediocre album, and instead would be celebrating the success of the single for "ugly." and the constant decline in records sales over the past couple of years? can it all be blamed on piracy? certainly not. a certain percentage, i wouldn't doubt, is because of it. and yes, it's costing artists money, but the bottom line is that artists gain more from your concert money than your record buying. so if you really support an artist, yes, buy their albums, but more importantly, go pay money to see them live. and buy merchandise at the shows. hail to the theif's success is akin to the way wilco's yankee hotel foxtrot beat the odds in debuting in the top 10 as well, after being released nearly a year after its internet pirating. the truth is that good music will sell, regardless of how it's leaked. and as much as the music industry will complain about it 'til the earth stops spinning, blue-collar musicians and artists of note will continue to be fairly unaffected by piracy. while lars ulrich will have to buy only one new benz this year. poor guy. posted by J. Neas | 6/18/2003 05:52:00 PM
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