Slashdot Mirror
TMBG to Release MP3 Album
Stardate writes "MP3 is
building up momentum from bands who know what's going on...
the GoodNoise label will
release a new album by They Might Be Giants in the spring,
as well as offering some old albums for purchase." I own 6
Giants albums. I've ripped 5 of them. I'll be first in
line to download that bugger. They have a couple of older
tracks already there.
I cant wait till most artists use the extra space on a CD for Mp3 versions of the tracks.
"My Rio dos NOT skip damit"
>> you gotta love 'em!
> Yes, if I had an IQ of 3, I probably would.
You aspire to an IQ of 3?
And so, In the Days of the Great 21st Century Music Revolution, Mp3 rose to power.
laddy laddy laddy.
Well, so people say. So I imagine. So I hope. So it may happen. But now, all the money is still going to the Man. The big hollywood Man.
Show me the money.
SHOW ME THE MONEY!!!
- Graylight
When will Matador Recs starts to sell its stuff on mp3? Imported CD's are very expensive outside the US (where I live), and I can get free bandwidth at uni (hehehe), so it's very tempting to buy the mp3 files on the site.
Covarde Anônimo
"If you've got to ask, you ain't never gonna know."
"... I declare our city to be a free and independent state to be named Tri-Insula!" --Fernando Wood, Mayor of NYC 1861
What if the hacker is 150 years old?
I'm showing my age here, but how could someone call himself a hacker, and not have at least 5 Yes albums?
...Nothing interesting here. Just move along...
Can you guess my favorite TMBG song?
Signed,
Particle Man
(What It Really Should Mean...)
First off, I'm going to compare the Music Industry with another segment of the market that neatly parallels it, and ultimately which (hopefully) both will follow the same model: the publishing industry (specifically: books).
In both industries, you have a large number of potential sources (ie performers and authors), with a very small number of intermediaries (the labels and publishers). The publishers (music & book) serve to promote the product and provide distribution/manufacturing channels in order to facilitate large-scale sales. Let's look at the Internet's effect on these three functions of the publisher (in reverse order):
MP3s aren't going to kill the Music Industry (maybe in the longggggg run, but certainly not for several decades). What they fail to see is that it's a different channel for sales. What scares the RIAA is piracy. What they don't realize is that for all intents and purposes, piracy is controllable to minimal damage with two easy steps (the first of which is by far the most important): proper pricing and aggressive attack on known (and discovered) pirates.
The problem here is that the RIAA folks have gotten fat on the big profits you get from CD sales. They love the $5 or so profit they get from a typical $15 CD. Yes, that's right - your typical artist sees maybe $1 from each CD in royalties, another $3 or so goes to the retail outlet you bought it from (from which they have to pay rent/promotion/etc.), about $2 goes to manufacturing and distribution, and $3 goes to promotion and in-house costs of the labels.
Given what my reading of the market for MP3s is (and I in no way pretend to be a professional marketing person (Please, Shoot me!)), I think that you could probably sell MP3s for:
A side note: the proposal of someone previous that bands should release their music for free and make money off the tours is stupid. Tours are massively expensive, and only those with large backing can do it to begin with. Sure, bar-style touring is possible, but from all the people I know that do this, you make virtually no money (well, you can eat, but no real cash) doing it this way. The big tours do make significant cash, but it's a case of "Have money to make money". You need several hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy all the equipment, rent the facilities, hire the techs, etc. And you need it up front - you can't do all that after ticket sales. That's what the record companies provide - resources for bands.
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
If the big 5 only sign one new band per year per label, you'd better start using mp3 if you ever want to get discovered.
From before you got that telephone pole lodged in your ass.
More like a telephone pole lodged in your head. Explain to me how they are "fun"
Fingertips taken individually aren't all that great (although some are cool: I'm having a heart attack), but all together they are a really neat idea.
As for John Henry, I didn't like it at first either. But some of the songs (Snail Shell, Why Must I Be Sad and A Self Called Nowhere come to mind) really rock.
TMBG (and every artist that gains publicity from these "So-and-So to release MP3s" stories) gained their stature, to a large degree, from the Cathedral paradigm. Wake me when some obscure, unsigned wretch achieves a "brand name" status solely via the use of MP3s (bypassing mainstream and college radio outlets; bypassing the gatekeepers of major labels and large indies). Why don't you try being the guinea pig? Be sure to give us frequent status reports.
There may, in time, be a "free music" success story, but I think the frequent cheerleading of "free the music" wrongly attempts to shoehorn everything-and-the-kitchen-sink into the box of Free Software. The major labels and commercial radio chains form a Cathedral portal that will cling to every inch of its authority every bit as much as Microsoft does.
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=8^
You remember "fun", don't you?
From before you got that telephone pole lodged in your ass.
I'm not a musician, but these are the exact things I love about that album.
I think Snail Shell could make it on the radio. But they'd have to Make A Deal with the DJ.
The thing is that you get more of a choice
what songs you want, and you can not get (or
pay for) the bad songs, and get all the good
ones.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
TMBG is the most aboveground/underground band ever.
everyone who's ever heard them heard of them from a friend who heard from a friend who heard from a friend...and yet they're still insanely popular all over the world...
distributing mp3's is continuing in that great tradition of "hey...you've GOT to listen to this!!!" and it's wonderful!!
I've gone to both of their concerts in Houston over the past two years and had a blast. They put on an excellent live show - I think somebody here put it best when they said that TMBG was a fun band. Their lyrics on most songs are far more intelligent than anything that a group like Matchbox 20 could ever put out. The lyrics that aren't "intelligent" oftentimes are tongue-in-cheek - I find it hard to pass negative judgement on Them because they are one of a few groups who don't insist on writing songs that are exact copies of each other (e.g., Gin Blossoms, Matchbox 20). I can understand many people's dislike of Them, but your post lacks any sort of intelligent criticism and gives me the image of someone foaming at the mouth.
"There is no culture in computer science, only cults." - M. Felleisen
TMBG is the ONLY band from whom I've bought more than one album.
Furthermore, they have the highest percentage of good songs on each (not to mention high number of songs total).
Hey Mr DJ! (I thought you said MP3's were evil)
Any band who can come up with a song about stellar fusion AND give it a beat has got my vote. Get a clue and a brain!
Not EVERY song out there moves in 4/4 time or is about how ya trew da bitch ova ya knee yadayadayada....
The link given points to TMBG, but says nothing about MP3's. Where's the real story?
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=8^
Check out Soul Coughing's official web site, www.soulcoughing.com, where they have been been offering a free 'MP3 o' the month' for a while now. It's good stuff!
I was excited about this until I learned that it's not really a new album. They've just repackaged some b-sides and other stuff from their Then: The Earlier Years box set and are trying to pass it off as something 'new'.
I picked up Then for $20 at Media Play and it contains all 5 albums that goodnoise has available on two cd's. It took me less time to drive the 15 miles to Media Play and get the CD than it would to download the mp3's. Maybe if this was an actual new album w/ material that wasn't already released then it'd be something revelutionary.
doesn't matter...
That album's gonna eat a chunk of my $$$ anyway
:)
It seems that most of the "free the music" crowd are people who just want free stuff. They think the association with "free software" will cover up that sorry little fact.
;o)
Breweries should just give away their beer and make money through support and services. Like taxi services...
MKnepher
josefk@wenet.net
Actually they didn't write Istanbul OR Particle Man, AFAIK. Both of those songs are covers.
Actually, listening to them reminded me what a cool band they were and that I should buy some of their albums...
MKnepher
josefk@wenet.net
Come on!
Accordions and clarinets in their music?
Istanbul not Constantinople?
Particle Man?
These songs SUCK EGGS!
I have more musical talent in my pinky than these hosers have in their whole pathetic little band.
If there is only one band that you bought more than one album then either you have no taste in music or you are too damn cheap.
loser.
There are three (3) albums which feature common elements from "They Might Be Giants," "Lincoln," and the "two" B-Sides/Dial-a-Song collections. These albums are:
... If they start charging for each track of "Fingertips" from Apollo 18, the MP3LP will cost MUCH more than the CD.
"They Might Be Giants"
"Lincoln"
"Then: The Early Years" . This one includes as the second half of the first disc the first B-Sides collection. On the second half of the second disc is the second B-Sides collection.
If GoodNoise is splitting the B-Sides up then, yes, they are changing "which track goes where."
They're charging 99 cents per track -- but TMBG has a long history of releasing much smaller tracks (like 2 seconds - 1 minute) as just "interjections"
Might it be possible that the Music industry is moving from the cathedral to the bazar? Sort of like the fact that you don't make money from open source products but from support and other services (_you_ figure out what this means for
artists).
1st post?
You probably think "freestyle" Is open-source fashion.
I have listened to TMBG's _Flood_, and while I won't be as blindly disrespectful as you are, I can aver that there are many hip-hop bands that I consider to be of greater originality. I doubt you've ever heard of them:
The Roots
Black-Eyed peas
Company Flow
Heiroglyphics
And, okay, maybe you've heard of De la Soul, to round out a very abbreviated list.
Stop watching all the suburban gangstas listening to Master P and Puff Daddy, and thinking _that_'s what hip-hop is all about.
Peace
--Uche
I have more musical talent in my pinky than these hosers have in their whole pathetic little band.
Of course you do. You're the next Tom Lehrer, in fact.
Of course, it's a might difficult to make that Judgement ourselves, since you're Anonymous.
But then, maybe that's the point, eh?
It's not new, it's from "Then: The Early Years", and the way they've split it up, it'd be cheaper to buy the 2-cd set because the CD contains all the B-sides, and "Lincoln" and "TMBG". At $28, that's less than the $36 that the mp3's cost. I thought the whole point of mp3 is that it frees artists from distribution and packaging costs. GoodNoise is just using the mp3 hype to screw us like the record companies. Go buy the album at http://www.tmbg.com/catalog/albums.html and rip it yourself and save eight bucks.
l
Ask any klezmer band.
MKnepher
josefk@wenet.net
Yeah, we should all be listening to rock bands who only know 3 chords and "Hip Hop" like the rest of America. We don't need any of this original crap.
Oh, and I'd really like to hear what your pinky has done with all its musical talent. Maybe an mp3?
TMBG rocks 'da haus'
beautiful music
intelligent lyrics.
just plain ol FUN FUN FUN!
you gotta love 'em!
Case in point.
I wouldn't suggest basing your opinion of a band based on two of Their songs that you heard on Tiny Toon Adventures. Try listening to some of Their better songs (may i suggest the mp3 of "Where Your Eyes Don't Go" available at www.goodnoise.com, or "Dark and Metric" available at www.dialasong.com if you dont want to spend any $$$) before you make your judgement
It's all real, and everyone deserves compensation, whether it's the producers, recording engineers, luthiers, studio acousticians, or even the dreaded $uit$ who clog the industry. I would dearly love to see a GNU/Linux way for everyone (minus a lot of the suits) to Get Paid; I discovered Linux by accident many years ago, via an ad in the back of BYTE - I didn't need to be told how kewl it was by Berst or Petreley, or see it get covered by CNN. Linux achieved some degree of success without having to put five full-page ads in every issue of PCMag.
I hope that, in time, artists will not have to pander to the suits - which even the "rebel" or "underground" ones do. But there's a need to build alternative portals; newsgroups, mailing lists, fan sites, and such, are great - but they tend to reach only the converted. To really emulate Linux's success, you'll need more bandwidth for everybody, and then the knowledge that these alternative portals exist. MP3.com and Shoutcast are lame and insufficient compared to what The Industry has at its disposal.
We shouldn't just bitch about the unfair share that Sony gets for a CD by saying "free everything" - you already have "free" in that the "banner ads" used on commercial radio and MTV pay for your free "enjoyment" of Mariah Carey and Puff Daddy; why not work for a solution that allows bands to bypass The System completely and make a bigger pie-slice off their non-corporate CDs? Recordings are as real and legitimate a form of profit-making activity as touring is.
Who's gonna tell Brian Eno to his face that he has to go on tour twice a year to earn his livelihood? Who's gonna tell the composer Gorecki that he has to form a 90-piece orchestra and arrange a tour, just so people can hear his next symphony without starving him to death? Who's gonna pay Steve Albini in your scenario? Not all music (or musical activity) has to do with putting on a "show". Music != Showbiz.
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=8^
Isn't the difference between cathedral and bazaar about how the creative work (be it software or music) was produced?
.wav's) around.
:-)
I'd say almost all recordings, free or not, were produced cathedral-style because they came from a group of core developers (e.g. the band) and random people aren't invited to make modifications.
Making recordings bazaar-style looks to be a basically uncharted terrain. The only example I can think of offhand is Reign of Frogs' chain song (see http://www.reignoffrogs.com/contest.html), and it's only lyrics.
I think collaborative music over the internet could be very exciting, but the participants would need certain things:
0) Musical talent, or at least the ability to fake it. Somebody to write music and lyrics wouldn't hurt either.
1) Decent recording equipment, including the ability to play and record simultaneously (so you can play along with a partially recorded song).
2) A freely distributable tracker (program that puts different tracks together) that runs on everybody's box, or at least an agreement on tracker file formats.
3) Enough bandwidth to send pieces of the songs (i.e. fatty high-quality
4) Licensing that doesn't get in the way of the creative process and keep it open.
I think (0) and (4) are pretty much covered (use the OPL), and (3) holds at least for resnet connections in universities (and should hopefully get better over time), but the others leave a little to be desired. My biggest peeve is that the only way to do full duplex on linux is OSS/Linux (i.e. the not-free OSS system) with an AWE64.
Anyways, licensing aside, that's why recordings are pretty much stuck in the cathedral for now. Give it a few years.
-=Homer=-
http://www.futuresights.com/~gamh/
P.S. Here's the analogous conditions for free software development:
0) programming skill, and at least one person who can design programs.
1) text editor (e.g. emacs)
2) compiler (e.g. gcc) and make
3) any internet connection
4) open source licenses (e.g. GPL)
just got even more appropriate. :-)
I couldn't resist.
I think that TMBG and other music groups who are willing to take the risk of release mp3 albums will find themselves very happy. A amateur musicain friend of mine would never had gotten the audience he has if it wasn't for mp3's and sites like Mp3.com
but even at $8.99, it costs more to buy all 4 sets you would need to get all the songs on Then: The Earlier Years (TMBG, Lincoln, and the two compilations), than just buying THEN: The Earlier Years
>"My Rio dos NOT skip damit"
:(
Mine does if I stop it hard, so that the battery goes off contact.
I would have liked a solution comparable to a mobile phone, including a recharching unit....
this proves how little you know of them because there are two singers
(What It Really Should Mean...)
First off, I'm going to compare the Music Industry with another segment of the market that neatly parallels it, and ultimately which (hopefully) both will follow the same model: the publishing industry (specifically: books).
In both industries, you have a large number of potential sources (ie performers and authors), with a very small number of intermediaries (the labels and publishers). The publishers (music & book) serve to promote the product and provide distribution/manufacturing channels in order to facilitate large-scale sales. Let's look at the Internet's effect on these three functions of the publisher (in reverse order):
MP3s aren't going to kill the Music Industry (maybe in the longggggg run, but certainly not for several decades). Artists still need the labels for their facilties and promotional savvy, and for their normal retail & manufacturing stuff. What they fail to see is that it's a different channel for sales. What scares the RIAA is piracy. What they don't realize is that for all intents and purposes, piracy is controllable to minimal damage with two easy steps (the first of which is by far the most important): proper pricing and aggressive attack on known (and discovered) pirates.
The problem here is that the RIAA folks have gotten fat on the big profits you get from CD sales. They love the $4 or so profit they get from a typical $15 CD. Yes, that's right - your typical artist sees maybe $1 from each CD in royalties, another $3 or so goes to the retail outlet you bought it from (from which they have to pay rent/promotion/etc.), about $3 goes to manufacturing and distribution, and $3 goes to promotion and in-house costs of the labels.
Given what my reading of the market for MP3s is (and I in no way pretend to be a professional marketing person (Please, Shoot me!)), I think that you could probably sell MP3s for:
If the record industry goes after pirate MP3 sites seriously (as MP3.com says they should), you should be able to limit your losses to pirates (probably about to what they "lose" now to people ripping off CD and making Live recordings...) They'll just have to get used to living off of smaller profits. But on the other hand, if I can get my favorite songs cheap, I'll probably buy more of them. So, the total amount I spend on music won't change - I'll just get more music, while the RIAA people will still have my (total) amount of cash. Win-Win.
Not all of my Music Industry arguments apply to the Book Industry, but there are enough parallels for interest. That's another discussion.
A side note: the proposal of someone previous that bands should release their music for free and make money off the tours is stupid. Tours are massively expensive, and only those with large backing can do it to begin with. Sure, bar-style touring is possible, but from all the people I know that do this, you make virtually no money (well, you can eat, but no real cash) doing it this way. The big tours do make significant cash, but it's a case of "Have money to make money". You need several hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy all the equipment, rent the facilities, hire the techs, etc. And you need it up front - you can't do all that after ticket sales. That's what the record companies provide - resources for bands. You have to remember, maybe 0.1 of 1% of all artist out there do a "big" (ie stadium) tour. Maybe 10% of all signed artists get to headline their own tour. The rest tour with another (bigger name) band, or in smaller-settings (ie few 1000s). And remember, music is similar to game sales: almost 90% of all sales is within 3 months of release. The rest is residual.
Music has intrinsic value, and I have no problem whatsoever with an artist profiting by selling me his music. What I don't like is the massive markup I pay to the middleman these days.
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
How about singles?
This was true for me as well for a while, before I got started on an R.E.M. collection. There's so much crap music out there.
I think this is a good idea. It remains to be seen if they'll sell alot when you might be able to find it for free.
Just a quick ?, how do you store MP3's for use say 10 years from now. Do burnable CDs last that long? When MP3 is surplanted by something better will there still be players years from now?
I'll wait for the CD..
Although I like the try before you buy aspect of all this.
/A
But other than that, I just save my money.
Excellent! Someone with a sense of discipline!
Many bands that sound great in studio have no vibe live. On the other hand, some bands that sound great live suck in the studio.
At any rate, though, touring makes very little money for very few bands. Touring is almost always to boost album sales by increasing artist exposure, *not* as a primary source of income.
Touring is a sucky way to make a living, especially if you have a family.
MKnepher
josefk@wenet.net
Raw Pulse Code Modulation?
Mmmmm. MP3s on CD.
---------------
Do not discount the fact that you have free will.
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=8^
Okay, here's the math:
the equivalent of 4cds @ ~$24 = ~6/cd.
okay?
Now, what was the question? Here's the answer: TMBG released a really really rock-solid compilation. When I had all my CDs stolen, I bought this mother.
And I first heard them on MTV's 120 minutes lo these many years ago. Saw the video for "Don't let's start" and have been hooked ever since.
I can't wait. I'm downloading the 2 mp3s they've got at goodnoise right now.
No, you're jumping to conclusions. "Then: the Earlier Years" contains all the songs that GoodNoise is selling seperately as four albums,
It contains "They Might be Giants" (their first album), "Lincoln" (their 2nd album?), and the same B-sides and singles that GoodNoise has split into two releases. GoodNoise has essentially chopped this album into four pieces, and is selling them seperately. True, "Lincoln" and "TMBG" have value as individual albums, but not as mp3 because you're not getting the CD case insert and artwork.
I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned that many of the B-sides included on Then: The Earlier Years are also present on Miscellaneous T.
Industrial Disease here. TMBG is one of my all-time favorite bands. I know they've been offering free downloadable songs (mostly dial-a-song stuff) on www.tmbg.com since the site started. If they will support MP3, that's great!
And what exactly would you consider to be good music?
I'm going down to cow town the cow beneath the sea the land beneath the ocean that's where i will be beneath the waves the wave that's where i will be.....
Yeah, we should all be listening to rock bands who only know 3 chords and "Hip Hop" like the rest of America. We don't need any of this original crap.
Oh, and I'd really like to hear what your pinky has done with all it's musical talent. Maybe an mp3?