Music 2.0 – Jeremy Warmsley & His Mates
Song, by Toad is the future of music.
So are Fence Records. So is Welcome to Our TV Show.
This is neither as serious nor, actually, as facetious a statement as it seems. Song, by Toad? The future of music? Ah hah hah haaa, what vainglorious hubris! Well actually I’m not being serious, but it’s not completely silly. In the world of music 2.0 what we’re doing here, especially as we move into session podcasts, with added video and pictures and mp3s of session tracks, and again as we start to release collectors’ 7″ vinyl and as we form links with the local music community, may be an insignificant part, but it is a part nonetheless of what is happening to the music industry.
Now, I am obviously not talking about replacing Sony BMG or MTV or anything so silly. I am saying that music is turning from a one-dimensional – i.e. just a tune and a story – into a multi-dimensional enterprise. Old music existed just as a song. Then it added particular recordings by particular artists. And now what appears to be happening is what I am talking about here: it’s adding everything.
You can experience this blog in numerous ways: you can stream the mp3s via The Hype Machine; you can listen to the podcasts; you can read and interact on the posts; you can be part of it by being involved in the Edinburgh music scene; you can be part of the interactive cluster of people who participate in each other’s stuff, like the Contrast Podcast, the series of soundtrack posts, or the ‘cultural’ exchange that’s about to happen between myself and The Waiting Room (DC, to regular commenters). Soon there will be live sessions with interviews, exclusive session mp3s, Dylan – one of my regular readers – is pencilled in to do some really good photos of the sessions and I may even start filming them, once I’m up and running. It’s called vertical integration, if you can stomach such terms, and it means I will be providing everything – editorial and review on one hand, social forum on another, local community node on another, record production and release on another, and then multimedia content on another. This may be a small and insignificant embodiment of this phenomenon but it is squarely ‘Music 2.0′.
They may not thank me for saying it, but Fence Records are a sterling example. They’re a record label, a community and, to an extent, gig promoters. People feel part of what they do, and they can get everything from Fence: they can play, attend gigs, make artwork, buy and listen to music, take part in the demo process through the Picket Fence series or just exchange obscure smart-arsery on the message boards.
Now to the point of this post: Jeremy Warmsley. I must apologise to him actually, because he emailed me ages ago wondering if I’d be interested in writing about Welcome to Our TV Show and I ended up unintentionally ignoring it because I didn’t have an easy box to fit it into, which was lazy of me. Welcome.. is a project whereby Jeremy and his mates invite a bunch of musicians round to the house and put together a kind of live recording session where they play songs, try out new stuff, collaborate, and generally just enjoy themselves with music. They film the whole enterprise, they release the session mp3s, they photograph it to bits and what you have at the end is ramshackle and slightly amateurish, but such a massively important antidote to XFM-friendly stadium indie that it fills me with joy to see it happening.
So, for their second episode they had Lightspeed Champion, Emmy the Great and Laura Groves – a really superb mix – and the videos are up on their MySpace page. They also have a presence on YouTube, Facebook and are currently working on their own website. The major labels won’t innovate, so the musicians have had to. Ultimately I assume that The Future of Music is going to end up being owned by a small handful of massive corporations because, well that’s just life isn’t it. But the turmoil at the moment is giving real opportunity for grass-roots innovation, and it is the approaches being pioneered by the likes of these guys that shows us where this industry is ultimately going, if you ask me.
Emmy the Great – 24
Laura Groves – I Wish I
Lightspeed Champion – Hooker Song
Jeremy Warmsley & Emmy the Great – The Boat Song
And here’s a sample segment from the show itself:
This is great.
I remember Beck saying in an interview a whle back that in the future albums won’t follow the same format – it’ll be downloadable tracks, artwork and video content that listeners (viewers? users?) can access, arrange and explore in their own way. It will become a more interactive (and so perhaps a more ‘personal), experience.
As the technology to create podcasts, videos and home recordings is now more affordable, more and more people will get on board and explore the possibilities. I think it’s a hugely exciting time for music. And kind of puts the “downloading is killing music” furore of a few years back into perspective.
And any development that puts a way of creating and distributing music into the hands of the artists (as opposed to the record companies) can only be a good thing.
Also following a similar ethic and worth checking out are:
http://www.fromthebasement.tv
http://www.takeawayshows.com
Ultimately Bart I think I agree. I mean, there are arguments against this digital meltdown, and I’ve been slaughtered in the past because of it putting small record labels in danger and making it harder than ever for musicians to make a living out of their art, and I appreciate those argument entirely.
But when it comes down to it I see more and more people taking advantage of the opportunities this has created, and making loads of interesting things. TV should be next – those studios battling their writers should be very, very careful.
good chat matthew.
i think the arguement that free downloads/mp3 blogs etc will damage small labels is flawed, in that the only decent money to be made for many small artists is through getting paid for gigs and selling cds/merch/whatever direct there. the point is that most people won’t come to your gig in the first place if they haven’t heard you (ie through free downloads) in the first place.
i don’t like emmy the great. but i do like that ‘24′ song.
I think this was directed at independent labels who aren’t small enough to take true advantage of the DIY approach, and are perhaps more like smaller versions of big labels just with more character. But I agree with you, cutting out the bureaucracy often allows people to make more by selling things for less. I still think the revenue streams are highly uncertain, but I am just loving the creative atmosphere I’m seeing in the grass roots of the music industry at the moment.
And I am not generally a massive fan of Emmy either, but I also like that one.
I think Daytrotter is my favourite of all these little ventures. Ok, there’re a lot of ‘established’ indie bands/artistes on there, but there’re a ton of unknowns outside of small cliques too. &, sure, it’s getting to look a bit like an ‘owned’ site these days, but the sheer scale of what they are doing is inspiring. Plus, the aesthctic of their site is gorgeous. Their ‘court’ artists are quite wonderful.