Industry Still Can't Buy a Clue by George Ziemann -- January 26, 2008 A couple of months ago, we heard a lot of hubbub about how it was time for the music business to change, some it actually coming from the labels themselves. Of course, expecting the people who screwed everything up to fix it is like calling a blind interior decorator to spruce up your living room. Somewhere out there in press release land, we hear from the IFPI, which has figured out that the Vortex O' Death they're being sucked into speeds up once you get as far down as they now find themselves. But even as the industry's miserable life begins to pass through its own eyes, they still think that the problem is pirates. For those of us who think that the industry has sucked the life out of music and are hoping for its speedy demise, this is a very good thing. As long as they keep blaming pirates instead of the brain-dead zombies that stare back at them in the mirror every morning, they're stuck in 1999. Garth Brooks stepped forward this week to remind us that even an independent can be an utter moron. The story is that he was at a soccer field and heard one of his songs being played back as a cell phone ringtone. Does he A) acknowledge his fan and give him a thumbs up, B) offer the fan an autograph or photo op, or C) give the fan the third degree about the source of the audio file, using the cell phone to call the people that sold the PAYING fan the ringtone and yell at them? The moral of the story appears to be that if you're a Garth Brooks fan and want to meet him up close and personal, all you have to do is use one of his songs as a ringtone and get close enough for him to hear it play. The other lesson is that Garth ain't quite bright enough to figure out that the 10-second ringtone is a commercial for him everywhere it goes off. Garth don't get it. Don't be a Garth. The MPAA reminded us all about survey results they announced some time or other that said college kids were responsible for at least half of the imaginary losses they didn't suffer. As it turns out, it was all bullshit, which is pretty much what we all thought in the first place. My favorite story this week involves Amazon and their "DRM-free" mp3s, which all the labels have now signed on for. Reports of problems with these files have begun to surface, a sure sign that someone is trying to put some kind of control or tracking mechanism into mp3 files. And there are platform issues. The end result is that they are not normal mp3 files. Do not want. Moving On... While the industry continues its fight against imaginary pirates, the rest of us can move on. The act of making music is not dependent on large piles of money, as much as everyone seems to want to make us believe. The shallow pop and hip-hop that has dominated for the last several years is fine for the teenagers, but sooner or later, people are going to want to see musicians play instruments again. If there's any truth to the whole evolution idea, people will eventually expect that if they have to pay a small fortune to see someone perform, they won't accept lip-syncing in favor of those "awesome" dance moves. As I've been working through the songs I'm producing for The Hurricane, one of the things that Carl Hayden and I have discussed is the rawness of the sound. Some of the songs sound like being there on the stage. From an art-and-science-of-recording point of view, that's supposed to be the goal. It was Edison's goal anyway -- to accurately reproduce a performance. Stick enough halfway decent microphones on the stage and this is really not too difficult to catch. But it's kind of messy. A bit noisy and not always in a good way. The damn cymbals are everywhere and you can hear the snare drum in every mic. Everything you try to "improve" by whatever means and for whatever reason is going to carry you further away from that raw sound. While I have no aversion to trying to make the songs sound better than they actually did, the raw sound feels real. It feels like a band in a bar. That's what it was. I think that's a good thing. If we can just get an audience next time...