What You Need to Know: Spotify and SoundCloud Might Elope

September 29, 2016

It’s with hushed voices and dashing glances that most discuss the tumultuous love affair that exists between streaming music sites and the modern music industry.

The argument is complicated, detailed, layered — all around heavy. On one end of the argument, artists and musicians are in arms against the streaming music sites. Taylor Swift and Thom Yorke live on that end, petitioning against the low, low royalties that most artists (especially the independent or young ones) manage to accept. It’s not unwarranted criticism. The up and coming artists of the present, past, and future have to find other places now to find money to continue their craft. CD sales are nearly nonexistent. The cool kids still buy vinyls, sure, but that’s still an unreliable market. Because of the market that music streaming sites like Spotify, Tidal, and Apple Music have created, musicians must rely on merchandise and touring in order to make a living off the actual buying and selling of their records.

SoundCloud is (was), in many ways, no better than Spotify. It wasn’t until recently that they made strides in aggregating a credit card bearing, paying audience of users. Until very recently, when the in-between advertisements became too obvious and annoying to its users, did SoundCloud make strides in producing paying customers.

But I’d argue that SoundCloud was never the place for paying customers. I would argue that SoundCloud is, and I wishfully hope will remain, the random, difficult to navigate streaming music site filled to the brim with random 30-second tracks of something your skinny cousin made in his basement. SoundCloud was a haven for those just getting started, the easy to access music streaming site that required very little to put your podcast, songs, or mixes up on a website. Independent artists thrived in SoundCloud. Without SoundCloud finds, our world wouldn’t have Jai Wolf or Chainsmokers or Ryn Weaver (to name just a few). If SoundCloud is acquired, the hope of the one in a million chance dies evermore.

My opinions aren’t absolute. When and if Spotify acquires SoundCloud, very little will change for artists. The schema that they currently work within is already perilous, low-paying and competitive enough. I hope instead that the market fills the empty void left behind by SoundCloud with something similar (or better). Some functioning avenue for the quiet, closeted artists of the future who need the powers of the Internet to find, augment, and broadcast what talent they may or may not have. I am nervous for the impending acquisition because of the loss of faith it may incur. I fear for the little man, those less lucky than Jai or Ryn, who may never be found as a result of these changes.

Check It Out: Tiny Desk Concerts in the 21st Century

September 28, 2016

NPR Music feels antique.

To some, maybe the podcast and music station has aged gracefully. To some, maybe Bob Boilen and Robin Hilton’s weekly opinions on topics like Janet Jackson’s most recent album and the ‘dire’ state of the music world still sound valid and original. But the thick layers of metaphorical cobwebs that line the walls of that podcast’s recording studio in the minds of millennials is, well, undeniable. Millennials are omnipotent in the games of the Internet, so what is it that keeps NPR Music alive? What is NPR Music’s currency? Where does their legitimacy lie?

I argue that it lies in Boilen’s Tiny Desk Concerts and his team’s original, simple and perfected decision-making in choosing artists, acts, and performance pieces to participate in the weekly off-the-cuff acoustic performances. The politics, genres, and ‘boxes’ of the music industry melt away. In a tiny book-filled room, it is an artist and their craft; nothing else, nothing more.

Need proof? Unsure of my confidence? Take a look at the most recent Tiny Desk Concert. Reemerging from the banquet feast of fame secured from their Las Vegas stint, the Blue Man Group appeared on this week’s acoustic concert. The three blue-faced men are silent, beating at their PVC pipes and strumming their homemade spinulums (an original Blue Man Group instrument that is part slide guitar, part bicycle wheel), and extensive xylophones while spoken word tracks play overhead. It’s simple, rhythmic, out-of-the-box weird, and hilarious. Three blue men tap out a funky beat while the audience is told to breathe their dragon breath and visualize a collective harmony of “winning, winning, winning.”

Then look too at the Tiny Desk performance held four weeks prior. It was Anderson .Paak & The Free Nationals, a more current but equally original 21st crew of genre-benders, that brought young eyes back to Boilen’s ongoing project. Soul layered on top of hip-hop along with something undeniably sexy and smooth, Anderson .Paak & The Free Nationals needed this simplified venue to fully convey their inimitable talent. It allowed us millennials – those who have been kissing the unnoticed, worn-out feet of Paak and his crew for too long – to legitimize what the 21st century has made true for so many artists: technology didn’t kill originality. So to remind ourselves of that argued reality, let’s keep Boilen’s bookcase-lined operation intact for a little bit longer, yes?

Francis and the Lights: Farewell! Starlite

September 27, 2016

Many just met Francis Farewell Starlite of Francis and the Lights. To the many, he was just introduced to the mainstream music scene by hip hop’s youngest prophet, Chance the Rapper. Francis and the Lights wandered between the ears of Chance’s dedicated followers as the opening melodic, electronic mumblings to “Summer Friends,” the third track on Chance’s Coloring Book. Quickly, and then perhaps purposefully, Francis and the Lights became to Chance what Justin Vernon is to Kanye: a softer, electronic-heavy hype man production artist with a portfolio speckled by all genres of music.

Justin Vernon has offered his musical mastery across all named genres of the music industry. He went from “Skinny Love” to the Staves to Volcano Choir to the confusing, haunting madness in Kanye’s 2010 My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Francis Farewell Starlite is more or less the same. From his underrated 2013 EP Like a Dream to his film score for Robot & Frank to the quiet genius of his production on Drake’s Thank Me Later and Donnie Trumpet’s Surf, it’s clear that what he has is pure, unexaggerated talent that won’t be tarnished by the selfish lover that is fame.

Farewell! Starlite is now streaming for free on the Francis and the Lights website and Apple Music as well (if you too have sold your wallet and soul to the bigger man of poor music streaming sites). A generous, overeager fan such as myself will tell you to drop everything — ignore all else!! — until you hear Starlite’s long-awaited release. And a new, Chancellor the Rapper groupie would probably tell you the same.

It’s by far one of the most original albums of the year, and is most succinctly described as a detail-oriented, thought-provoking, somewhat haunting 40 minute playlist from inside Francis Starlite’s hidden, enigmatic person and mind.

The Internet activity surrounding Francis and the Lights isn’t heavy, but it still remains cult-like. Francis’s black-and-white, typically unexplainable music videos drew original, quiet fandom. That was 2013. This is 2016, when artists like Kanye West, Justin Vernon, and Chance the Rapper are drawn closer to Starlite’s magic. And in 2016, the music videos and music remain magical: minimal with the overwhelming ability to captive listeners with untouchable simplicity.

With detailed and disciplined choreography, production, style, and presentation, Francis Starlite has been basking in his quiet genius for over a decade now. He has been lurking in the corners of Spotify and Soundcloud, buried deep in the production notes of Drake’s or Birdy’s or Donnie Trumpet’s respective albums. But we learn then, through dear Francis, that with patience and humility comes power, grace, and an almost perfect understanding of one’s craft.

Calculated but not intentional, delicate but tough, the album stretches and expands to the hearts and ears of its listeners. Take a look and a listen: whether he is interested or not, Farewell! Starlite is about to propel itself to indie stardom.