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We're about to cancel our Sirius car subscription. We'll still get it in the house via our Dish package. There are a few good channels, but they miss some of the obvious stuff. For instance, Sirius has never had a channel that reflects current taste in jazz - the sort of stuff that get's good reviews from jazz journalists at AllAboutJazz or Downbeat. All they've had for jazz is the "smooth" and "classic" stuff that any real listener either doesn't listen to (smooth), or already has in her collection (classic).

Their rock genre stuff has always been largely lame, with the "college" and "alternative" stations not nearly so explorative as real college alternative stations - unlistenably lame really. There was one good free-form rock station, Sirius Disorder, which got killed in the merger - although they're giving it's main DJ an afternoon show now on the otherwise-bland "The Loft" from XM. We'll see if she gets to use her own playlist though.

Little Steven's Underground Garage is great, if you want a channel where every song is three minutes with a backbeat. I say that not cynically. When it the mood for that, it's perfect. But most of the rest of the rock stations are bad pop hits from name-your-decade. The blues channel doesn't have the depth that a real blues collector would take you to in his living room - again, it's the pop version. They gave up on "world music" - just as well, but why not a serious African channel?

And if they really wanted to get a serious group of listeners, they'd program for readers of Signal to Noise - that is, to those exploring the edges of current musical artforms. It might be a small audience, but if they programmed for it, they'd own it - unlike the majority of the Sirius/XM channels where the content's as stupid as what Clear Channel pumps out, only suitable for background noise, not focused devotion.

I was about to be clever and say "Just pull a Lou Reed on 'em", but after searching for some amusing links I discovered that labels apparently have a MMM clause in the artists' contracts to prevent exactly that. Oh well.

I'm a jazz sax player, and have been a big fan of Maria Schneider for several years. She has been creating some of the most sophisticated and musically interesting big band music around since her first album in 1995 (Evanescence, which was also nominated for two Grammys). She has 3 or 4 other albums, and most have received Grammy nominations. She has been regularly winning Down Beat reader & critics polls since 1994. Schneider is the heir apparent to her mentor, the late Gil Evans, who's music includes the famous Miles Davis collaborations Birth of the Cool, Porgy & Bess and Sketches of Spain. Her music is very accessible, though she's explores complex meters, harmonies, textures, and timbres. Her pieces tell a story, and often make reference to visual images. I bought her latest album over the web a few months ago. It was something like $9.99 for 128kbps, $14.99 for 320kbps. It's an excellent album, but I still think that Evanesence is her best effort so far. By all means check out her band live if you ever have the opportunity. She always has some of the best jazz musicians in NYC in her group. Evanescence (amazon.com) Concert in the Garden review (allaboutjazz.com) And, she's a babe! -Hot Wasabi over & out

Well, if they have enough power for Jimi Hendrix, shouldn't they have enough power for a computer lab?

And that is? You haven't mentioned any musical qualities in your post at all...

She sings sogs [sic] that a lot of people enjoy listening to.

This completely fails to address the question. The question was "what qualities appeal to people", not "what is her profession." If you factor in the lip synching thing, you didn't even address the question of what her profession is, but nevermind.

I like all kinds of music, all genres. Not all of it is particularly talented -- I love the Ramones but they never did figure out how to play a song with three chords in it -- but I do try to take in as wide a variety of genres as I can get my hands on: rock (Beatles, Kinks, the Who, Led Zeppelin, the Clash, the Pixies, and lots of punk & indie rock type stuff from there), jazz (Miles Davis, Louie Armstrong, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Martin Medeski & Wood, John Zorn), electronic music (Kraftwerk, Massive Attack, Autechre), rap & hip hop (Public Enemy, Tribe Called Quest, the Roots), classical (Bach, Beethoven), world music (Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, klezmer jazz, tuva singing, Los Lobos [or are they rock?], Japanese pop), etc. Just to scratch the surface.

If there's something inventive & vibrant there, I'll give it a chance and probably like it. If it's crap, I do what I can to avoid it, no matter how popular it is. Jam bands like the Grateful Dead and Phish are crap -- they pick a scale and noodle around in it aimlessly in a pot-addled haze for a few hours, but dammit you could write a Perl script to do that. The Doors are a collossal, steaming, quaking mound of crap. Jimi Hendrix was astounding, as were the Beatles. The Rolling Stones were okay, but nothing brilliant like Hendrix or the Beatles. Pick & choose.

This inventivness area is where Britney Spears makes falls down dramatically -- there's no spark in it that makes it worth paying attention to. That's not to say that pop musicians can't also be interesting artists -- both Prince & Madonna showed that magnificently since the 80s -- but more often than not, the stuff on pop radio is middle of the road crap that really does have little to redeem it. This has nothing to do with popularity -- I neither know nor care what bands are popular on the charts these days -- it has to do with the performer's ability to work as an artist and establish some kind of visceral connection with the listener.

But then, I'm not really answering the question either. You're just saying she's good because people like her; I'm just saying she sucks in spite of the fact that people like her. Neither of those angles really gets to the heart of the question. For that kind of answer, you could do a lot worse than to read Pat Metheny's commentary on Kenny G's version of Louie Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World". No, it doesn't have anything to do with Britney Spears, but it does convey quite nicely how painful it can be to see some no-talent ass-clown arrogantly stomping all over the memory of one of the most widely enjoyed people in American music. This isn't the exact transgression Britney makes with her music, but it ends up pushing a lot of the same buttons.

But really, if you want proof that Britney Spears is not only a talentless ass-clown, but also a dangerously corrupting influence on America's youth, you need look no further than this quote:

I think we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes and we should just support that.

America's "wholesome little sweetheart" is nothing but a Stalinist! Argggh!

My understanding of the RIAA argument is "Record sales are down, therefore that must be caused by filesharing". Perhaps they miss the point that the general public is bored and disinterested with the bland repetitive "product" which these companies provide.

No offense, but perhaps they miss this "point" because it's a crock of shit.

I'm a jazz musician, and journalist. You're right: Pop music is repetitive. (Being "repetitive" is actually kind of the point of pop music, but we'll set that aside for the moment.) Most of it is also garbage. 16-year-old children, even with admittedly good voices, record their own poorly-written crap (Debbie Gibson notwithstanding) and are rewarded with national circulation. And somebody, PLEASE...explain Macy Gray.

But let's be clear: Any decline in CD sales is despite this truth, not because of it. Check the playlists on P2P, next time you're surfing. Eminem, Britney Spears...people aren't turning to P2P because they want to be turned onto new, engaging music. They use it because it's free. On this point, the record industry is 100% right. People use P2P, for the most part, to listen to the exact same crap that's on the radio.

When the public becomes "bored and disinterested" with "bland" and "repetitive" music, then Bob Brookmeyer won't have to turn to Dutch labels to record his music. Rap fans will learn about J-Live, and they'll forget about DMX. Rock fans will hear bands like Don Caballero and Shipping News, and schmucks like that Andrew-somebody-or-other won't be able to find work at McDonald's.

Don't take my word for it. When the record labels -- the folks who really study this data -- saw their sales figures starting to decline, what was the first thing they cut? Jazz. Almost completely. Classical? Most people think, "Mozart," "Bach"...and on the rare occasions when they're in the market for a classical CD, you'd better have those two on-hand; because they're not interested in Ligeti or Lutoslawski. If you really believe that the general public is even remotely "bored" by the same-old, same-old, then you're kidding yourself. It's a dream world I'd like to live in, but it just ain't so.

crib