Peter Giger

I loved to see a new edition of Maia Hirasawa’s album Though, I’m Just Me on Spotify, but it made me wonder if the dear old album format is dying - or if it’s not dying but it should be. The album is a very strong socio-economic tradition in the music industry, but it’s strongly related to products as the LP and the CD. The album was also practical in a society with simple attention mechanisms. A few music labels owning most of the industry, and relatively few but very famous artists releasing albums evenly over the year, carefully planned for maximum attention. The Internet age will probably lead to substantial changes in this distribution form.

Maia Hirasawa’s new edition is, 2008, a rule rather than an exception. Most popular music albums is released in multiple versions. The digitalization of the music industry inevitable leads to reconstructed forms of distribution. Personally I think we will end up in the “blog format”, with the artist releasing songs as they are completed. The Swedish artist Marit Bergman is probably leading the way with her subscription service:

Next to last she hints the possibility of this distribution form supersiding the album format. I like this change. In a way I like the album distribution form, but it feels kind of strained in the digital world. I would like this change even better if all artists distributed new songs immediatly into distribution forms as Spotify, and let our listening determine the artist’s “pay check”. In this scenario, Spotify would not be taxonomized by albums, but by artists and their chronological flow of songs. As a listener I should be able to subscribe to new songs by for example Marit Bergman, and for every time i listen to her music, she would get paid. I hope this is the future of Spotify and other streaming services.

It would also be nice if distribution platforms as Spotify had a paypal button on each artist page, where I could sponsor artists if I like their music. Perhaps, this would especially benifit new artists - no point of sponsoring someone I know to be a multimillionaire.

Release the Stars

I’m currently writing about the act of crossing disciplinary borders, and that is exactly what Rufus Wainwrigtht is doing in his music. I’ve wrote this in another recommendation, but if you like the music of Antony and the Johnsons, you will probably enjoy Rufus Wainwright.

Verve Remixed Christmas (2008)

For several years, Verve Records has released christmas mixes from their catalogue, remixed by the most talked-about DJs and producers today. Copy into Spotify search field:
spotify:album:2NHzoS0CXfXuDrFZwVnCFR

If you want a more traditional take on christmas music you can listen to the album by the three Swedish songbirds Sanna Nielsen, Sonja Aldén and Shirley Clamp. By the way, they had a christmas show on Swedish television yesterday night. Texts are in English.

Our Christmas (Sanna/Shirley/Sonja)

Copy into Spotify search field:
spotify:album:5jJVsCclsbBWAgn0cGQuR3

My last christmas recommendation - for this time at least, is a requiem by the contemporary eclectic composer Alfred Schnittke. This album is quite homogeus and I think you might enjoy it if you like more popular contemporary composters as Arvo Pärt. Now when I think of it, this album isn’t christmas music. Why do I connect a requiem with christmas music…? Don’t know really. Might be the mood. Might be that the original mening of a requiem has been separated from its pragmatic origin. Now it’s more or less “mind music” with a spiritual overtone.

Alfred Schnittke - Requiem (2006)

Copy into Spotify search field:
spotify:album:0×4BbY69sjkT1agEdgPcjU
!!! This link doesn’t work. WordPress replaces the x with some multiplication sign, just looking like a x. Search on the name Alfred Schnittke instead.

Vivaldi's Cello - Yo-Yo Ma

Vivaldi is one of my favorite classical composers and Yo-Yo Ma is one of the best interpreters of his music. Vivaldi created music in a time before the pretensiousness of Bach and many after that - well, I sort of love that kind of music too. Vivaldi’s music is very earthly. I can imagine myself standing i front of a new land, wide open for my interpretations and actions. Not asking some power beyond what to do with this new land, but rather let the soil gleam through my spreaded fingers, rolling up my sleavs and get to the task of building something with my own hands and mind in a harmonious relation. Yes, you are right, I don’t view baroque music as social, but that is a personal anachronism. A non-social aspect of music hardly existed before very late in the technoscientific revolution, ie. the invention of the gramophone (phonograph).

Nigel Kennedy

There is quite a lot of classical music in Spotify, but it can be hard to find it. The reason is partly due to the structure of their database. It doesn’t seem to have any column for “composer”, so the “artist” and the “composer” is mixed up in the database. So the best way to find classical music seems to be through the artist and not the composer.

Nigel Kennedy plays the violin like a god. He is known for doing exciting interpretations of traditional music, like Vivaldi.

Copy the uri below and paste it into the search field in Spotify:

spotify:artist:1RrTDtKUNYXtLoaxQFplYV

Tindersticks

If you can’t wait for the next album by Antony and the Johnsons (Scheduled to January 2009), you will probably love Tindersticks.

spotify:album:1ssjGcQIyMLP8K6dfIfnFz

Anna Ternheim 2008

Lunch Break, so I have to recommend Anna Ternheim’s latest album. It’s a real work booster.

spotify:album:0pb57v7EmQeVsbnOi0K60D

For some weeks now, I’ve enjoyed the Swedish artist Marit Bergman’s album “I think it’s a Rainbow” on the streaming service Spotify. I made a playlist linking to the album, just like I do in iTunes etc.  Today when I clicked the link I got the message:

This track is currently not available in Sweden. Try finding replacements for all unavailable tracks in this playlist.

Not there anymore. I had to listen to something else

I’m not particularly happy with the thought of albums behaving like a yo-yo in Spotify. Is it Marit Bergman herself who have stopped the album? Probably. If it is, this is the first time I see a serious threat to this kind of music distribution. For a long time I have lived in some kind of illusion that streaming services would replace file based music distribution. But I am not sure about that anymore. Perhaps artists more and more will go Marit Bergman’s way and run a subscription service for new songs + a lot more things related to being a “fan” - a relationship I’m not particularly interested in myself. This kind of relation to the “fans” might be good in some ways, but if artists more or less arbitrarily can take their music in and out of streaming services we might never be able to view it as more than a radio hybrid.

But then again, perhaps the collecting feature in music will die. Perhaps it will be more of artists collecting music lovers than music lovers collecting music. The only thing we can be sure of is that music never will be “the same” as it was before music slipped out of its material container.

Tomas Andersson Wij - En Sommar på Speed (2008)

Swedish Singer Songwriter, lyrics in Swedish - so if you happen to know Swedish, like the singer songwriter style and have made the switch to streaming music…

http://open.spotify.com/album/5ctpRlbgCMJojJS9LoaBZE

More Modern Stories from Hello Saferide (2008)

What makes these unassuming vignettes so special, however, is their boundless confidence. Norlin often chastises herself for her mistakes, but she rarely sounds guilt-ridden or self-pitying. It has been said that the human race can only progress by imagining better versions of itself and in these songs—“2006”’s list of resolutions, “My Best Friend”’s affirmation of companionship—there is an understated decency, a precious humanity. Her songs acknowledge a fact of life rarely acknowledged in music: that kissing, laughing, and crying can happen in the same three minutes.
from a review in Stylus Magazine

http://open.spotify.com/album/4XpUhJOuX2L9y9QPVvimb1