i read this on francois kevorkian’s blog recently and found it to be so bang on. if i hear another track posted on someone’s facebook profile that they or their circle of half wit friends made the night before, i’m going to start smashing faces as well as computers. if it’s not fit for an official release, it shouldn’t be fit for the internet. just because you get thumbs upped from a few of your reject yes men pals or got charted on some stupid internet song sharing chart, does not make you or it a hit.
“One thing that is seriously getting me puzzled has to do with the trivialization of so many things due to computers and software. Distributed intelligence, that sort of stuff?
Don’t get me wrong, I use the stuff all the time, live it, breathe it… But it would appear that there could be a parallel between the tools becoming so incredibly powerful, yet the content of most music not quite ‘resonating’ as much as it used to anymore, and us as a group collectively becoming less sensitive from the overload?
Is it the sheer volume of new things being posted daily, or the fact that music itself has lost some of the deep and subliminal hold it had on our collective consciousness? Less emotional content in new music because of the tools used to create it? Not sure.
Would love to see translated examples of 20-year old kids rushing to the store to get a certain song, or picking someone’s brain all night until morning to discover more about some producers or groups.
Maybe it used to be that there were a lot of local scenes, with long incubation periods which led to specific styles and genres slowly being created, a differentiation which has mostly vanished with today’s globalized, homogeneous music cultures and planetary-scaled sharing engines?
No more mystery, and quests? Just accelerated, exponential growth with no buffer time to even absorb and digest what is out there. So the qualities that stick are those of a song that can make an immediate impression, rather than from one that might take several rounds of listening to reveal its more delicate and subtle beauty?
Again, parallel to Darwinism, and what it might mean for the evolution of music.” FK
Obviously the internet and cheap technology gives more people the capacity to create and distribute music, so obviously a lot of garbage will start to get made and heard, but it’s stupid to assume that this means that humans are becoming desensitized and we no longer know what “real music” means or feels like. That’s like saying that since McDonalds and Coca Cola have taken over the earth, suddenly people no longer understand how much better tasting a home-cooked meal is! The internet is your giant version of the flooded basement of records, with nuggets buried 3 crates deep. There is good new shit out there, but you have to know where to look. You and FK just don’t know, don’t see, and can’t hear. Instead of falling back to technological dismay and contempt for the younger generation, try actively searching for interesting online scenes, communities and netlabels. Dig deeper. It’s not all itunes, pirate bay, and soundcloud!
I mean, you’re entirely right that songs should be fit for release before going online, that would make things much easier!! But what could “fit for the internet” possibly mean? How can the internet possibly ever be discerning, when it empowers all of humanity equally, by it’s very nature?
Obviously there used to be a lot of local scenes all over the world with long incubation periods! But back then there was no such thing as style or genre, there wasn’t even such thing as the word “music” or “art” in many societies. Music just WAS – however it was in your particular society. There was no mainstream globalized greedy-ass piece of shit record industry back then either, and we’re tearing it back down now as we speak, thank god!