Whilst record cover sleeve art has always received plenty of attention (and rightly so) I believe that center labels have been somewhat neglected … To keep the focus solely on the artwork I have purposely not included any information on the music, artists or date of publication as most of that should be self explanatory from the images.

Digitizing LPs has almost nothing in common with ripping CDs. It’s a slow process, and a lot of work. But it can be incredibly rewarding, and going through the process puts you back in touch with music the way it used to be played (i.e. it’s a great nostalgia trip). Over at birdhouse.org, I’ve written up a guide which I hope will thorougly cover the process of prepping your gear, cleaning your records, and capturing as much of the essence of those old LPs as possible, so you can enjoy them in the context of your digital life.

Read: The Compleat Guide to Digitizing Your LP Collection

Critics and tastemakers have been talking about, reviewing, and exposing music to the masses for generations. With the advent of sophisticated algorithms, computer programs such as Pandora and Apple Genius are now suggesting new or unusual music for listeners.

Speakers included:

Tim Westergren, Founder, Pandora
Doug Brod, Editor-in-Chief, Spin
Joel Selvin, Senior Pop Music Critic, San Francisco Chronicle
Niema Jordan, Executive Editor, 38th Notes

The panelists debated “algorithms and blues,” wondering aloud whether technology has freed listeners from music journalists — or made them more valuable than ever. The discussion had a bit of trouble focusing on the topic at hand – many seemed more interested in the completely worn-out question of the impact of blogging on journalism. Fair enough – there are a hell of a lot of excellent music blogs out there, and there’s no question they soak up a lot of eyeballs/traffic that formerly went to Rolling Stone and Spin. But at the same time, very few of the music blogs have the expertise, or go into the depth that RS and Spin do. Still, it’s a pretty tired question by now.

The actual point of the panel – whether algorithms (recommendation services like Pandora) are having an effect on music journalism – was barely addressed head-on. Maybe that’s because it can’t be – where would you go to find hard numbers on whether people read less journalism because Ping or Pandora do a good job of suggesting new tracks?

My take is that the premise of the question is baloney. People read music journalism for a ton of reasons other than just finding recommendations. They read to try and grok the entire universe of music – to get the back-story, to trace influences, to absorb opinions, to color the landscape. Recommendations on what to buy, I expect, are pretty low on the list of reasons why people read about music.

In other words, music lovers love Pandora because it provides another avenue to discovery, not because it replaces the “role” of the music journalist.

Because the discussion wandered in so many directions, I won’t try and synthesize the rest. Here are loose notes and quotes from the speakers.

Joel Selvin was once the subject of a song by the Fried Abortions (a splinter group of the Angry Samoans) – raunchy, gritty, 1st-generation punk. Selvin proudly played the track… to show that the critic is down with his critics? Unclear, but it was funny.

Host Ben Manila: “When Ronald Reagan won re-election, I played The Ramone’s ‘I Wanna Be Sedated’ 16 times in a row.”

“Critics are, by nature, criticizing something they can’t do themselves (make music).”

Music discovery: These days an artist either needs to be on Pandora or be on a TV commercial in order to “break through.” No one listens to music radio anymore.

Tim Westergren: These days we have more artists making a living, far fewer becoming rich and famous. The democratizing effect of today’s distribution is leveling the playing field.

Doug Brod: There are fewer people wanting to be rock stars these days. There’s a humility across the board. More who don’t want to be “personalities.” The “world” of music is broader now and involves TV and movies, pop culture in general – music isn’t a standalone thing anymore.

The DJ’s sycophantic nature: S/he very rarely says they don’t like the music they’re playing – DJs are almost never critics.

Joel Selvin: Part of the role of a critic is to let you know who’s bunk, who’s a charlatan. Algorithms don’t do that for you.

Joel Selvin on auto-tune: It would have ruined Rod Stewart, since his entire career was based on being a quarter tone flat.

Spin: We review dozens of albums per month. Why linger on the bad ones? Just let ‘em rot.

Niema Jordan of 38th Notes: We focus on Bay Area music – Pandora can’t do that.

How do young music journalists find jobs? Blogs have opened up a whole new talent pool. Spin finds a lot of talent on web sites.

Tim Westergren of Pandora: Don’t try to make a living from your music right away. It saps out the joy.

Mark Twain: Wagner’s music is really much better than it sounds.

Quality is rewarded: If you’re a talented writer or musician, someone’s going to notice you.

Music writing has gotten a lot more personal since blogging changed the criticism industry.

Old headline: “Harvard professor says jazz, silent films are art.”

Spin is branching out into the iPad world – launching an app next week. They want to enliven the experience of reading with stories curated by the edit staff, plus videos of featured artists. Trying to bridge the magazine and internet experiences.

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.

Spin: Music blogs aren’t putting us out of business. We’re story tellers, while most blogging is off the top of the head.

I disagree: No reader has ever said to a magazine “I don’t need you anymore because Pandora recommends music now.” People read for a lot more than recommendations.

Writers at major pubs now wait for stuff to percolate up through blogs and social networks – they’re not the discoverers anymore.

Zappa: Most rock journalism is done by people who can’t write, interviewing people who cant talk, for people who can’t read.

Niema Jordan: People still want to get a record contract for some strange reason. Maybe they don’t understand their contracts?

Q: Technology is creating more quantity in music. The tools you use to sift through it all have an impact.

Pandora: The broadcast world can handle one stream at a time. The web blows that pipe open – to infinite streams.

Spin: We have a love/hate relationship with Pitchfork. Some writing is great, a lot of it is turgid. But we don’t “chase” Pitchfork – we have our own ears.

Q: Why doesn’t Pandora recommend opera or something great you don’t know? “By definition we suggest similar music – users would hate having stuff totally out of left field thrown at them..”

Pandora: Focus on what you do, focus on your craft. Enjoy yourself, and talent will be rewarded.

Vintage LP stereo banners stacked by Jive Time Records and Project Thirty-Three:

And remember: The secret to survivin’ is knowin what to throw away and knowing what to keep.

How does it sound? “The machine is not adding its own color. It’s not adding anything of its own nature,” says the device’s developer. The samples on the NPR site are low-res internet audio, but the comparisons to the original are impressive, despite a persistent background hiss.

The technology could eventually become available to general consumers, meaning that the daunting task of MP3-encoding piles of vinyl would become way less daunting. It’s a strange and beautiful world.

Thanks Jeb

Sales of digital music through stores like iTunes are up (though slowing) – but not nearly as much as sales of CDs are down. Anyone who has thumbed through bins at their local LP/CD outlet recently has probably noticed the “no elbows required” phenomenon — there’s so little competition with other shoppers that you never have to share elbow space with GRateful Dead shoppers while plumbing the shelves for GRuppo Sportivo re-releases. I recently felt like I had the local Rasputin’s all to myself, which was a bittersweet sensation (sweet because I had a musical playground all to myself, bitter because of the writing on the wall — in-store music shopping has basically become passe). New York Times:

… very few albums have gained traction. And that is compounded by the industry’s core structural problem: Its main product is widely available free. More than half of all music acquired by fans last year came from unpaid sources including Internet file sharing and CD burning, according to the market research company NPD Group. The “social” ripping and burning of CDs among friends — which takes place offline and almost entirely out of reach of industry policing efforts — accounted for 37 percent of all music consumption, more than file-sharing, NPD said.

By some estimations, this Christmas could be the last hurrah for CD sales, “and then everything goes kaput.” I, for one, fear the reaper. And the reaper is us. But what exactly is it that we’re supposed to fear? Nostalgiac sadness at the death of a shopping and browsing experience with 100 years of tradition behind it? The trend toward owning singles rather than full albums? The death of cover art and liner notes? Lack of involvement in the album as a larger art form when we’re all stuck on perpetual random play? The role of the record store as an editorial conduit designed to tell us which music matters? Plummeting fidelity? All of the above?

Not all of these fears seem well-founded. Cover art has made a big comeback in digital music collections, and ID3v2 lets us store lyrics and liner notes inside our files. Meanwhile, the serendipity of the browsing experience hasn’t died — it just smells funny. Discovering rare finds by browsing has merely changed form — we now have discovery tools like Pandora and last.fm and eMusic at our disposal – arguably more effective and “intelligent” than the random “dusty bin surfing” record store experience.

If record stores do indeed go belly up in a few years’ time, loss of audio fidelity is probably the largest threat faced by music lovers. Online music stores typically sell tunes at well below CD quality — and few users notice or complain. Music swapping sites, where it’s often possible to find 192kbps or better versions of what you’re looking for, fare a little better, but it’s a crapshoot. If the only copy of that rare Japanese pressing of Engelbert Humperdinck’s Live in Butan* is available at 128kbps and you’re desperate, you’re going to grab it. But 128k just doesn’t deliver the punch necessary to draw out the full resonant potential of all that cowbell (YouTube’s insanely aggressive video compression doesn’t do much for it either).

There is a glimmer of hope for the children: EMI has agreed to release its tracks on iTunes both free of strangulating DRM technology and at 256kbps – double the fidelity of other iTunes music and free of copy restrictions. If there is justice in the universe, other labels and online music vendors will soon follow suit.** Though I personally can barely tell the difference between 256kbps AAC and uncompressed PCM audio, there are golden-eared folks who can — such as my friend’s nine-month-old son.

As for the role of labels and the distribution chain as editorial pre-filters, wading through the crap so we don’t have to, I call “bull.” In fact, the reverse is true – too much crap is a big part of the reason for the demise of the record store. Online music networks bring organic, Darwinian principles to the filtering process — a sort of trickle-up phenomenon (or “treacle-up,” if you prefer). By monitoring attention streams and counting downloads, music sites can let the wisdom of crowds do the pre-filtering for us. In theory, the good stuff will rise to the top like thick cream, without any help from studio execs in comfy chairs. In theory, anyway. Whether you trust collective “wisdom” is another matter. If the “wisdom of crowds” turns out to look more like the idiocy of crowds, we’re no better off than where we started.

But the greatest threat posed by the rise of bits over atoms may not be technological or aesthetic at all. If the end truly is nigh, we should fear for our children’s backs. After all, if they’re never required to cart heavy record crates from apartment to apartment on their journey through college, they could grow up with weak spines, unprepared to ward off the next wave of corporate spoon-feeding.

* Stuck Between Stations makes no claim that such a recording actually exists.

** Update: Apple began selling DRM-free tracks in iTunes on May 30, 2007.

Apparently Collier got a little build help from Pete Hartley, who also designed the drum kit Def Leppard drummer Rick Allen used after losing his arm. All part of the “fundamental strangeness of Sheffield.”

What really sets Collier’s synth apart is its use of a ribbon controller in place of a keyboard, putting its sonic output somewhere between that of a theremin and Rolf Harris’ Stylophone. Except that Collier’s strap-on has been known to blow amps in a few seconds or less.

Icing on the sawtooth: You can tweak Nick’s knobs yourself, if you’re so inclined.

More:

• Pink grease roller disco
• Terrifying wiring shot
• More of Collier’s synth creations

Photo courtesy Dan Sumption, via Dan Shot Me (Gallery: Pink Grease roller disco)

The new royalty rates are irrationally high, more than four times what satellite radio pays, and broadcast radio doesn’t pay these at all. Left unchanged, these new royalties will kill every Internet radio site, including Pandora.

savenetradio.org has been created to raise awareness and reverse the tide, before this vital medium is smothered in its crib. Please consider sending email to your congress-critter / reps, encouraging them to stop the madness.

We all know that the theory was that digital downloads would let people only purchase the songs they liked, rather than the entire album, but I had no idea the tide had shifted this far already. Me, I’ve bought exactly one single from iTMS in the past few years – a track from Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers, which I needed for a performance piece we were prepping for a friend’s wedding.

That wee melanoma aside, I still think almost entirely in terms of albums. Doesn’t mean I think the album is sacrosanct – I do delete duds from the collection without regret when they don’t warrant a place in the stash. But at eMusic, iTunes, and name-that-download-site, I smoke only full albums (though I don’t inhale). It’s not some kind of pride thing, and it may in fact indicate a form of stupidity, but it’s just the way I am. Perhaps a sign of age.

Two factors at work here: 1) The gestalt of the album is dead (or at least it smells funny) – people not raised on vinyl don’t have that flip-it-over, we’re-not-done-yet thing in their blood, and 2) Artists and labels are being punished for a decade of dross. When the ratio of keeper tracks to flotsam gets low enough, no consumer in their right minds is going to pay for 90% fillah.

Most importantly, I think the atomic nature of data structures on the internet are having an effect on our brains. We don’t read entire web pages, let alone books. We Google for the keyword, then Cmd-F to find the answer on the page. We don’t channel surf to discover, we BitTorrent the stuff we already know we like. We don’t buy an album per week and digest it two dozen times from the comfort of a beanbag chair, we download a track from MySpace and listen to it twice in the background. Jeff Kempler of EMI nails it:

Perpetuating a business model that fixates on a particular packaged product configuration is inimical to what the Internet enables, and it’s inimical to what many consumers have clearly voted for.

Trying not to sound maudlin or sentimental, but dammit, we’re going to lose something important here. AOR is not a bad word, and Out of the Blue is not just some brachiating XML tree waiting to be parsed.

Bits are winning. I miss atoms.