The big issue of the week was Taylor Swift pulling her stuff off Spotify and pretty much raising the ire of Bob Lefsetz her estranged fan and now stalker troll who continues to tout Spotify as the future and if you're buying records, you're the problem than solution. Which this stalker troll comes out of the woodwork to remind the Old Poop to take his meds and go listen to the first Crosby Stills and Nash album. Or just go to Aspen and go ski with his girlfriend. Basically this touchy subject has even moved on to other blogs, Sal from his site was talking about Spotify Namely Sal from Burning Wood: http://burnwoodtonite.blogspot.com/2014/11/stream-baby-stream.html
The dilemma of today; streaming. Today's kids and generation who think music is and should be free regardless and the oldsters who lived their lives at various record stores and continue to search to find music that nobody else plays. Which is real easy to do if you're fucking stuck hearing Corporate owned radio at work and have be subjected to hear Don't Stop Believin' every two hours, or Killer Queen every 27 minutes like The Fox did and raised my ire and put them down as 2014's worst radio station. KDAT isn't much better with Broken Wings by Mr Mister or Soul Sister by Train every night either. Somebody at Cumulus didn't get the memo about a new Train album and that Mr Mister sucks. Corporate owned anything forcefeeds us with the mundane and overplayed to the point that we want to throw the radio across the room, or hope somebody doesn't change it to K Hack and the same goddammed country song played over and over again. To which I asked my partner in crime is there any uptempo country song they play after 10 PM? It could be worse, we could be stuck with Pandora, which working Sunday Night Overtime gave us the Micheal Jackson channel, every other song was MJ with stuff by Prince or overplayed Motown, then changed over The FOX channel which Sweet Child O Mine was song number 2 and Back In Black number 4 and then the worst of it, the Garth Brooks channel which we heard canned applause of Garth songs among the slow tempo country crap. In fact the most uptempo was Boot Scoot Boogie, another song I can do without. Songs you hate can make the night go by even more slower, it also doesn't help when the so called boss refuses to let you have a half hour lunch, in this department it's 25 minutes if you're lucky. And doing exercises before going back to work, which I want to tell Big Boss Man that being on your feet 8 hours stocking books is exercise itself and a 15 minute sit on your ass break to recuperate would work wonders. But that's another touchy subject for another time.
We now live in an era, that the best things are on the internet and everything you hear or see on TV is Corporate owned, even down to each and every reality crap you see on TV and the 21 songs played constantly on radio. Satellite radio isn't much better, so I'm not renewing my Sirius/XM for another year. Variety is a thing of the past there too. I guess it's mandatory if you're going to have a XM channel, you have to have Bruce Springsteen on there, he's there on my favorite channels, Outlaw Country, Deep Tracks, Underground Garage and the E Street Channel. If they can find a way, they would throw Bruce on Ozzy's Boneyard and Opera. We also live in an era that social media balloons things up to make the non news a big event. Like Kim Kadashian's baring her butt and letting the world know that Kanye West owns that. We live in an era that we get the conserves saying Freedom isn't free, but then pop a tampon when Dave Grohl and Bruce Springsteen (there's that man again) performs Fortunate Son which best describes the conservative CSers of today. We live in an era that we get a chance to vote the assholes out that do nothing, only to have the masses stay home and the idiots that had a 10 percent approval rating get reelected once again. The biggest head scrather of this election year. And then have fuckhead John Boehner trying to get this Keystone pipleline approved so China can have oil. Nothing makes sense anymore.
We live in a era that Mircosoft kills the XP program, which means you have to upgrade to a new computer or else suffer through an endless onslaught of ads up the arse when you're trying to read an article and have to deal with pop ups or cut ins, shit ads that appear out of nowhere. And dealing with frozen screens, the usual shockware flash isn't working that's now commonplace for even reading the Day In Rock Report or whatever the LA weekly pukes up for articles. Or Rolling Stone for that matter. But don't get me started on that, or what Robert Wheeler has in store for Net neutrality. I have a feeling he and the other Corporate CSers would like to tip that in his favor, or pocket book for that matter.
The Spotify issue is a very touchy one, and it doesn't put Daniel Ek in a good role either. Seems to me that them paying 2 billion for royalties for the overplayed songs are a drop in the bucket thing for him. The 10 dollars monthly fee seems to be reasonable, unlike paying 18 dollars for the New Basement Tapes supergroup CD which is a waste of money and time considering the source and sources. As much as I would love to try to support vinyl or CDs, the high price of vinyl from a Neil Young or Robert Plant is fucking ridiculous.70 dollars for the new Storyville from Mr. Neil? I don't think so. 40 dollars for Lullaby? You gotta be kidding me. It's no Led Zeppelin 4. So if you can't afford that, you can still buy them on CD? Guess what children, if the bottom line of CD sales keep declining year an year out wouldn't it be better to knock the price down? Not with the major labels, they raise the price of CDs 2 fucking dollars.
It amazes me to no end on how Trickle Down economics benefits only the 1 percent and the rest of us get nix, nil and none. In this day and age, watching our paychecks getting less and less and watching prices go higher and higher that we simply cannot budget and afford the tactics of major label incompetence and greed. Neil Young might be a rock God, but there comes a time we have to say enough and bypass his latest stuff because it's not good enough me to sign off a half day's pay on a subpar love letter to his new girlfriend, who has been around the block a few times. But then again we can blame Warner Music Group for the high prices as well. The demise of the record stores isn't going to come down to boycotting them or illegal downloads from the comforts of home (although the latter of this does) but rather the overpricing of the major labels for subpar shit. To which they do not promote but in case of name association of Neil Young or Percy Plant hoping that the hardcore will forgo a few meals just to get Storyville on the turntable. But I'm not buying it. And neither will you.
In the case of Taylor Swift, she's the media darling of the month and while I don't have a need for her music, I did noticed that her 1989 album can be had for 14.99 on vinyl (at the moment-available December 4). But by taking her songs off Spotify, the old crank Bob Lefsetz tore into her even more so than he ever did. His postings is about 80 percent old fart talking but there's a 20 percent of truth into a couple things. Basically the main point is money and how to make money. And how the smart ones go into banking and the underclass dumbasses go into reality TV and bad music. And music of the 60s was so much more.
Simple reason: rock back then was anti corporate. It was the middle finger to the old guard. Nowadays the baby boomers are the old guard and hang on to those old songs to stick into commercials or for that matter become old fuck programmers who haven't changed their playlist on Cumulus Radio. Back then the music was art. New music today sounds the same and has a lasting flavor as made in China bubblegum. And it's all about the money.
But as for myself, I cannot change my statue or the things that I grew up doing. Which is continue to find the obscure song and artist and tout them, not sticking with the same old tired songs that I moved on to other things since I have no use for Back In Black or Blinded By The Light, great songs in their own wake, but I don't want to continue to hear them for 40 plus years, or like Dream On. Pleasant memories of the past get eroded away by overplay.
Stream away you like but I'll stick with The Randy Cliffs, or Chuck Murphy.
http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2014/11/11/power-taylor-swift/
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