A software engineer, Nelson, has some opinions about AI-generated images in blog posts:
"I have a growing hatred for AI-generated images in blogs. It makes me wonder if the text in the blog posts is AI-generated to some extent. It’s always disappointing seeing these images in blogs run by individuals. I expect this from corporate blogs but not indie blogs."
I get the frustration with AI-generated imagery on blog posts. On LinkedIn in particular, I will block people who post particularly obnoxious cartoon-like images alongside their (probably AI-generated) professional insights.
But I think Nelson is missing the root cause of the problem. It's incentives that have led to this state of affairs, not the AI image tools.
Part of the problem is many bloggers think an image is *required* for every post. This is reinforced by algorithms which favor such posts. This, in turn, drives bloggers to the easiest/fastest sources of free images – the AI image generators in Gemini, ChatGPT, Canva, and so on.
The "featured image" in content management platforms like Wordpress is what gets shown on the index page, in shared social posts, and other contexts. And certainly, the algorithms favor such posts over pure text posts, even if the text content in the spartan post happens to be far superior.
There are other factors at play, too.
Many bloggers are lazy, some are severely time constrained, a few are fearful of legal repercussions associated with copying images off the Internet, and a majority are creatively or technically incapable of making their own images to include on a personal blog post.
For people of a certain age, "Billboard charts" is synonymous with fame. Basically, if your band or record or composition appeared on one of the Billboard charts tracking album or single releases, you are part of pop music history, even if it was #99 on the Billboard Hot 100 or a one-hit wonder on the Adult Contemporary chart in September of 1986.
What can explain pop artists re-appearing on the Billboard charts after a long hiatus? In a discussion of late-20th century pop music trends, there was a comment from a younger person, expressing surprise about early 60s crooner Frankie Valli showing up more than a decade after his last appearance, when Billboard mostly featured disco, "AOR" (album-oriented rock), and New Wave:
The fact that Valli topped the charts again in 1978 with “Grease” still boggles my mind.
Reading this, I thought: Not if you were living through the 1950s nostalgia revival which was going strong at the time and lingered through the early 80s.
50s nostalgia was everywhere. It was on TV (Happy Days and Sha Na Na), the movies (American Graffiti, Porky's) and the radio. Not only were there retro musical acts like The Stray Cats, there were retro projects by established artists returning to the music they grew up with, such as Robert Plant's The Honeydrippers as well as individual songs by 70s stars like Queen's "Crazy Little Thing Called Love."
By the mid 80s, the 50s nostalgia trend had mostly faded away in the larger pop culture sphere. There were still movies about the 50s, but they tended to be serious stories or biopics as opposed to Baby Boomers reliving youthful times.
In the music arena, the Stray Cats and a few newer bands like Reverend Horton Heat and Guana Batz carried the 50s torch, but on a much smaller stage, and maybe dialed ahead a few years to the early 60s.
Billy Joel's "For The Longest Time" and Robert Plant were two of the last major acts to attempt to surf the 50s retro wave. When I saw Plant at the Worcester Centrum in 1985, The Honeydrippers segment at the end of the set felt silly and forced. The legions of fans wearing Zoso t-shirts would have much rather liked an obscure Led Zeppelin track.
But then again, this was the era of Payola 2.0, when record company executives could sideline heavy metal fans and pretend long-haired rockers wanted to listen to "Sea of Love." Of course, no one wanted to hear it. Nostalgia rock faded to the margins, and people mostly forgot the late 70s revival.
Rich people buying media properties or getting involved in adjacent media businesses is not necessarily a bad thing. We've seen some great things come out of visionary artists such as Oprah (OWN, Oprah's Book Club) but I would like to talk about local media businesses ... specifically author Stephen King quietly helping local broadcast media in Maine for decades.
You've probably heard about super rich businessmen from tech and finance and biopharma purchasing marquee media brands to extend their influence or fulfill other needs. Amazon titan Jeff Bezos buying The Washington Post. Biotech billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong purchasing the Los Angeles Times. John Henry and The Boston Globe. The Facebook early employee who bought The New Republic. These efforts seldom end well. The purchase of the brands is often described in altruistic terms, but the real goal is to exercise influence or live out some sort of media mogul fantasy.
Importantly, despite their business chops, these gurus from other industries are shockingly bad at understanding the fickle needs of media audiences, developing great creative talent, or recognizing the intangibles that lie at the heart of all great art and media. They can't help themselves from forcing their views onto the creative teams and final product. They assume that quantitative insights always trump creative decisions, which invariably leads to cloying, shallow media experiences and disenchanted audiences who don't stick around. Quoting Le Mondefrom June 2024:
The Post has lost half its audience, with 50 million unique visitors by the end of 2023, compared with 101 million in 2020, while its subscriber base has fallen from 3 million to 2.5 million, according to the New York Times. It accumulated losses of $77 million (€71.7 million) last year.
Author Stephen King is different. Decades ago, he got involved in local broadcasting in Maine. This was not a money-making gambit, or an attempt to exercise political power. Zone Corp. and WZON in central Maine are not reaching millions of people or serving as power levers in major coastal cities. King did it because he loved rock and roll radio, and he recognized that the airwaves were the lifeblood of far-flung rural communities and the spirit of the Great State of Maine:
“While radio across the country has been overtaken by giant corporate broadcasting groups, I’ve loved being a local, independent owner all these years,” King said. “I’ve loved the people who’ve gone to these stations every day and entertained folks, kept the equipment running, and given local advertisers a way to connect with their customers. Tabby and I are proud to have been a part of that for more than four decades.”
He's winding down his broadcasting activities, but he should be applauded for what he's done. King's investments in local radio stations were investments in local communities and small businesses in Maine, subsidized by his own global media empire. Good on him and wife Tabitha King for keeping them going for 40+ years.
I would love to see a new generation of successful creatives get more involved in local media businesses in New England and further afield. It could be broadcast outlets, online journalism, performance venues, or other projects. There are a few other examples that spring to mind such as "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" author Jeff Kinney's bookstore and downtown revitalization project in Plainville, Mass. But there's a lot of room for other successful creatives to help.
I discovered recently that an interview Bob and I did 10 years ago on GigGuide.tw before our February 17 2013 reunion shows in Taipei and and a show later that year in New York was taken offline after GigGuide was discontinued. The interview is worth reposting; it captures a moment in time that shouldn't be lost. It's hard to believe that show was 10 years ago and the band formed 26 years ago in Taipei!
GigGuide.tw were lucky to snag Feiwu's Ian
Lamont and Bob Hsiung for an email interview just hours before their
flights to Taiwan.
If you were born
after 1990 then it's quite possible you are too young to know them, but
Feiwu, along with the likes of Ladybug, 1976, Sugar Plum Ferry and The
Clippers are the progenitors of Taiwan's underground music scene.
Forming in 1997, Feiwu were among Taiwan's early indie successes,
releasing two albums, Birds of a Feather (1998) and Ring of Fire (1999),
and playing regularly at venues like Roxy Vibe, and Spring Scream in
its early years. Sadly, it was at Spring Scream twelve years ago that
Feiwu performed for the last time. Or so they thought. As part of
Legacy's 'One Night Only' series, Feiwu are reuniting for one final show
on February 17th.
Feiwu are; Steve Tsai (蔡承宇) on drums, Joe Huang (黃俊喬) on guitar, Bob
Hsiung (熊天焱) on bass, Andrew Watson (安德魯) on lead guitar & vocals
and Ian Lamont (藍醫恩) on guitar & vocals.
What have Feiwu's band members been doing since the split? Do you continue to play music?
Ian: I returned to the states in 1999. I've been doing
music off and on, mostly home recording with friends, but no
performances. Andrew was much more dedicated after he returned -- he
moved to New York, works in the music industry, and was in a couple of
bands, and his current band Coda Resistance plays regularly. Steve has
also gigged in Taipei with various people and is really connected with
the music scene there. One time he sent us a video of him playing drums
with Wu Bai.
Bob: I've bounced around a bit. I worked in Africa for
awhile building HIV clinics, then I was at MIT building performing
robots for a futuristic new opera. Sadly, I haven't been playing much
music other than jamming with my kids (1 & 3 yrs old). We play a
mean "Puff the Magic Dragon".
How did this reunion come about?
Ian: Even though we broke up years ago, we have
remained very close -- any time we visit Taiwan, or Steve comes to New
York or Boston, we get together. Steve came to Boston a couple of times
in the early 2000s to study English and also music at the Berklee
College of Music, and we would get together for some jam sessions at a
practice space. When the opportunity came up, the idea of getting
together again for a performance felt right.
The actual invitation came to Andrew. He used to work in the Taiwan
music industry and was a guitar teacher to a lot of young musicians,
including one or two of the guitarists in 88 Guava Seeds. He also sees a
lot of Taiwanese bands when they pass through NYC, so his network is
strong. And his Mandarin is unbelievably good.
Last April, Legacy approached him and asked if Feiwu would be interested
in taking part in this retrospective performance series at Legacy
involving underground bands from the 1990s. We were part of the scene
along with bands like LTK, Chairman (董事長), 1976, Ladybug
(瓢蟲)，Backquarter (私分街)，Ah-de (啊德)， Sugar Plum Fairies (甜梅號)， Clippers
(夾子)，Chthonic, Sticky Rice, Air Dolphins (海豚), etc. We wrote a lot of
songs in Mandarin, and a few of them, including 我愛台灣啤酒 a.k.a. The Taiwan
Beer Song and a song about Coco Lee, gained a small degree of local
popularity … or notoriety depending on how you view things. We couldn't
do the show in 2012, but I was planning on coming out to Chinese New
Year for a family visit this year. We were able to work it out to get
all five former members of the band together for a reunion on February
17 at Legacy in Taipei.
Bob: We've got A LOT of people to thank for helping make this happen - like Chairman and especially Daisy Lee!
Has it been 'like old times' reuniting and rehearsing old material?
Ian: Absolutely! Bob, Andrew and myself started monthly
practices in a rehearsal space outside of Boston last November. The
music came back pretty quickly, and we also went over some of the songs
that Andrew wrote after I left the band. There are quite a few of them
-- enough for a third album, actually. As you might expect, it's pretty
heavy! My only regret about the Boston practices is Steve and Joe
weren't there, but we have a full week of rehearsals in Taipei before
the show on February 17.
Bob: It's been really great practicing with Ian and
Andrew, but I can't wait to get back with XiaoYu and I'm really excited
to hear what we sound like as a 5 piece with Joe
Did someone say "FREE BEER"? How does it feel to have your reunion show sponsored by Taiwan Beer?
Ian: Ha! I was really surprised when I heard about
that. We really do love the beer, but had no connection with the
company. When we started playing that song in the 90s, Taiwan Beer was
an old school monopoly. We weren't even sure if they were aware of the
song. But the brand has really modernized and I think it's so cool that
they're receptive to supporting the show -- with free beer to people who
come to the concert!
This is not the first time there has been free Taiwan beer at a Feiwu
concert. At one of the Spring Screams we did, we brought a case or two
of the blue and white cans on the stage right before we played the song.
"Hey, who wants some free beer?" we asked the crowd … and they rushed
the stage! This time it's official, and I heard they are bringing a huge
amount of beer to this concert. No need to rush the stage ...
Bob: Ah, if only their marketing people had figured this out in 2000, Taiwan beer would be bigger worldwide than Heineken by now
The Taiwan Beer song will likely be the crowd fave, but do you yourselves have a song you're looking forward to performing?
Ian: Bob was talking about this at one of the practices
in Boston. There are a couple of really good tunes that were never
recorded or only appeared on compilations. They will be fun to play,
especially with three guitars -- listen for "Mary Jane" and "Deafened"
and "Closure". Bob likes another unreleased tune that's kind of
delicate, called "Say Something." From the second album, "Cuckoo for
Coco" is another one -- tough to play, but it's fun.
One of my personal faves is "Puppetmaster" (布袋戲), off the first album.
It's an instrumental. Westerners assume it's an acid surf song,
Taiwanese hear it and think of Taiwanese puppet opera. The story is a
little of both. Before Spring Scream '98 I decided to write a surf
instrumental that we could play at the festival, which at the time was
next to the beach in Kenting. The first time we played it at practice,
our drummer Steve said, "布袋戲!". This was the Taiwanese puppet opera that
used to be on Taiwanese TV. I didn't get the connection at first. But
it turns out that the soundtrack for some broadcasts was none other than
American surf instrumentals from the 1960s. We dubbed the song 布袋戲, and
gave it the English title "Puppetmaster".
Bob: We have a few songs that we played at Spring
Scream 2001 but never had a chance to record. "Resolute" is one of them
and is probably my favorite Feiwu song of all time.
Have you been continuing to listen to Taiwanese music, new or old? If so, which bands?
Ian: Well, two out of five live in Taiwan -- Steve in
Taipei and Joe in Taidong. Of course, they're pretty plugged in. I know
Andrew sees practically any Taiwan indie band that passes through New
York City.
One of the things that I did to prepare for this show was watch a lot of
YouTube videos that were shot at Legacy and other places around Taiwan.
We saw some of our old friends like Ladybug and Sugar Plum Fairy and
Chthonic, but I was also blown away by some of the new bands. Touming
Magazine is one of my favorites -- I really want to see them live!
A couple of other things I discovered by watching those videos: Many of
the bands we used to play with with are not only still together, they've
gotten really, really good. A lot of underground bands from the 1990s
(including Feiwu) were DIY punk rock hackers back then … we were still
feeling our way and developing our musical voices. 15 years later, I
look at bands like Sugar Plum Fairy, Backquarter, 1976 and other people
that have stayed together, and they've really blossomed as songwriters,
musicians, and performers.
One other thing I'd like to say: I really wish there was something like
GigGuide back in the 1990s. Great writing, great listings, and whoever
is taking photographs at the shows -- he or she (or they) are amazing.
When we were starting out there were some paper fanzines in Chinese and
English, like POTS. The distribution was irregular and many people had
no access to paper issues. If you missed an issue you might never see
the concert listing or interview that would change your life!
What have you missed most about Taiwan?
Ian: One time in the summertime, I saw the number 57
bus driver in central Taipei take a meter-long section of vacuum tubing
and … oh, I'm supposed to say something serious here, right?
OK. I arrived in January 1993 and except for 6-month period in 1996,
lived in Taipei until June 1999. I lived in Wanhua for a while, and
there were all kinds of things going on there. It was a very Taiwanese
part of Taipei, if you know what I mean. It had a great night market.
There was a stand there that had the best 花枝羹 , a kind of thick stew
made with squid. That district also had religious and folk celebrations
like "God's birthdays" when you'd see these incredible processions down
the street. Of course, sometimes the religious celebrations would start
early -- at the time getting woken up by paid mourners fake crying
through loudspeakers wasn't fun … but I can look back and laugh now.
I'm going to sound like an old man saying this. Every time I go back,
usually every two or three years, I see a lot of change. I kind of
regret that I have not been around to witness that -- it's almost like
I've been left behind.
Another good thing about living in another country, especially one that
is so different from your own, is the feeling of constant discovery.
Could be discovery of some cultural or social aspect, the food, the
people, the language, nature, music, whatever. I miss that too.
One other thing I used to do a lot of when I lived in Taipei was hiking,
which I can't do near Boston without driving for at least 30 minutes.
In the mid-1990s I lived in the Hsinyi district and hiking trails were
almost right outside my door. Sometimes I'd hike all the way out to
Shenkeng and beyond. That area of course is totally changed by heavy
construction, including that highway tunnel that goes all the way to
Ilan and those trails may not be there anymore. When I go back this
time, I am going to hit some of the trails in the north part of the
city. My brother-in-law says that some new trails have been added near
his house in Neihu, so I am going to explore those.
Bob: The food, the people, the music scene, the food.
For those of us that have yet to see a Feiwu show, what can we expect?
Ian: Definitely loud! Lots of energy. Singalongs in
Mandarin and English. Andrew spouting random words in Taiwanese. We also
have some special guests joining us on stage for some songs. Oh yeah,
and expect free beer! It's going to be fun!
Bob: 12 years worth of pent up rock and roll exploding on stage in one night (and a whole lot of Taiwan beer.)
You can catch Feiwu's final show ever at Legacy on February 17th.
In 1996, I bought a used IBM ThinkPad 701c (486 architecture) in a Hong Kong computer market. I think it was about $900. A journalist at the time, I was backpacking through China and Southeast Asia, and needed something small yet powerful enough to handle writing assignments, email, and a manuscript idea I had floating around in my head. I was also transitioning to digital media, and needed something that could render my hand-coded HTML and scripts.
Ten years before "netbooks," IBM's wonderful little 701c ThinkPad had a very unique approach to compact size: A "butterfly" keyboard that unfolded when you opened the laptop. There are some photos and historical information about the IBM ThinkPad 701 here. This video show the 701c in action. It's pretty much what I remember ... a little thick, but very functional. And more powerful than I could have ever imagined.
Supposedly, the design was inspired by a black bento box. Although primitive by today's standards, it was a solid little laptop that served me well for the tasks I was engaged in at the time -- writing, Web surfing, learning HTML, email, and Word. It ran Windows 3.1, but I could also run programs from the DOS command prompt.
At one point, I set up my little writing studio in the Golden Queen hotel, Georgetown, Penang, on peninsular Malaysia facing the Indian Ocean. One day, while taking a break from writing and fiddling around in the DOS directory structure, I discovered an interesting folder. /id ... DOOM? What happens when I RUN the .exe ...
The next thing I know, I am playing DOOM. On a tiny IBM laptop. Oh, man!
In the late 1990s, I had a house fire. No one was injured, but the butterfly ThinkPad was burned, the exterior case charred and partially melted. There was data on it that I wanted, including a manuscript. I brought it to the local IBM repair center in Taipei. Two young techs were at the service desk, and hardly battered an eye when I took the charred, plastic hulk out of a plastic bag. They got a small electric saw, cut open the case, removed the keyboard, and took out the hard drive which looked intact. They attempted to connect it to their diagnostic machine but it wouldn't read, unfortunately. But I really respected their attempt.
I'm reading a memoir by MIT professor Sherry Turkle, The Empathy Diaries. I attended a talk she game some years ago at the MIT Media Lab and was fascinated - her research revolves around questions about how technology impacts people. In the book, she not only traces the evolution of her academic passions, but her personal influences. She shared some interesting facts about her mother, shown above. There were some discrepancies listed on official documents filed in New York City in the 1940s and 1950s:
"She had a drivers license that gave her incorrect height and also shaved a few years off her age, something she told me that certain ladies at the Department of Motor Vehicles would agree to do, understanding it was better if unmarried women over 23 were officially younger. When she married Charles Zimmerman in 1947, she took a year off her age on the marriage license declaring herself 28. Six years later when she married Milton Turkel, their marriage license had her at 29."
Both scenarios described by Turkle - asking a DMV clerk to fudge the birth year, or providing the wrong ages on marriage registrations - are almost impossible now.
But a long time ago, this was not unusual. We know not only because of Turkle's mother's experience, but because a few people on my own family tree also had discrepancies, particularly for marriage certificates and job applications.
In the pre-digital age, many people (including immigrants, cross-country migrants, adoptees, and poverty-stricken families) may not have had access to birth records. Government officials had to go by what they were told, and may not have been told the truth for various reasons, including very compelling reasons. In some cases, sympathetic clerks may have helped, as we learned from Turkle's book.
We know this happened in other situations, too. Teenagers lying about their age to join the military was commonplace. An estimated 200,000 underage men and women enlisted during World War II. Not long after the war, enumerators for the 1950 federal census (released in April) could note in a dedicated field on the census form if they thought a respondent was not being truthful!
The moral of the story: Sometimes ancestors supplied incorrect information to officials, and they had good reasons to do so. Try to confirm dates and ages using other types of records that are less likely to be fudged, such as birth and death certificates.
There is an interesting article titled "Bob Dylan Lays Down What Really Killed Rock ’n’ Roll." I don't agree with the thesis that rock was destined to stay locked into the modes of the 1950s, but the insidious successor to the Payola scandal had a lasting impact on popular culture, and by extension youth and mainstream culture.
So, what did Bob Dylan lay down in his interview with AARP, cited in the article above?
Dylan said that this was very threatening to city fathers, so "they had to dismantle it." The black element became soul, white elements became English pop. And then there was payola controlling what was played, Bob noted.
Aware of their rising status, jocks established flat rate deals with labels and record distributors. A typical deal for a mid-level DJ was $50 a week, per record, to ensure a minimum amount of spins. More influential jocks commanded percentages of grosses for local concerts, lavish trips, free records by the boxful (some even opened their own record stores), plus all the time-honored swag. As Cleveland DJ Joe Finan later described the decade, “It was a blur of booze, broads and bribes.
As payola escalated, Variety and Billboard did lengthy features, calling for reform and government intervention (to its credit, Billboard wrote, “The cancer of payola cannot be pinned on rock ’n’ roll”). ASCAP was also vocal in their opposition to payola, using it as a means to lambaste their competitor BMI. At the time, the larger ASCAP represented the old guard of mostly white composers from the Tin Pan Alley days. BMI was associated with the young, racially mixed writers of R&B and rock ’n’ roll, as well as indie labels such as Aladdin, King and Chess. By the mid-’50s, BMI single releases outnumbered ASCAP’s by almost two to one. The older organization cried foul, accusing BMI of promoting payola.
So here's my take. I agree with some of what Dylan said, but he got a few things wrong in my humble opinion.
Popular music has been on a fast-track evolutionary cycle since the invention of the radio and LP. Other factors have contributed, from the music press to cable television to more disposable household income in the United States after WWII. The idea that popular youth music would stay locked into the modes of mid-1950s America while culture and society shifted, millions of new teenage humans entered the scene every year, musicians absorbed new influences, and musical trends crossed borders and linguistic barriers -- and sometimes came back -- seems like a stretch.
But one thing that is not a stretch is what might be called Payola 2.0, after the 1.0 scandal described in the article died down. Record companies couldn't give outright cash payments to DJs, but there were many other ways of exerting influence on influential media gatekeepers. In my opinion, this is where the suits really were really able to promote biases and sideline non-mainstream musical trends.
Some of the influence was obvious. Picking artists that had the "right" look. Promoting "safe" artists. Selective access and backstage benefits for powerful DJs and music journalists and other influencers. Ignoring, sidelining, or co-opting trends bubbling up from the underground, from proto-metal in the late 60s to punk in the 70s to rap in the 80s.
And then there are the charts, which were segmented according to race and other factors aligned with the needs of the music "industry." Did you know that until the early 90s music charts in the United States were based on a sample of self-reported sales from record store managers? Can you imagine the bias and BS that went on with those numbers? As soon as soundscan was implemented, there was an immediate realignment, with rap and grunge and techno and country storming the pop charts:
When Billboard, the music industry's
leading trade magazine, began publishing new pop and country album
charts last month using a new computerized method, the change set off
alarms in the record business that have not stopped ringing.
Pop
albums by a number of new artists whose careers major record companies
were trying to establish suddenly plummeted, while a bunch of country
albums took dramatic upward leaps. A chorus of record company executives
charged that the chart, prepared by Soundscan, a research film in
Hartsdale, N.Y., would seriously undermine their efforts to promote new
talent.
Boo hoo!
Since then, the digital transformations have resulted in an interesting fragmentation of pop music and youth tastes ... but with the music industry literally controlling major streaming platforms and paying for social media influencers, we're shifting into Payola 3.0, and with whatever algorithmically dictated patterns that will entail.
Why does most Taiwanese film and media struggle outside of East and Southeast Asia, while Korean pop culture takes the world by storm?
I've been thinking a lot about this in recent years, but especially since the Korean film Parasite did so well at the Oscars. Not long after, I saw the K-pop supergroup BTS appear live on the Today show in front of thousands of young people, some of whom had camped out for two days to get a prime viewing spot in midtown Manhattan.
Why aren't Taiwanese films and musicians enjoying the types of success? After all, both countries have had very similar economic and socio-cultural periods of development, not to mention strong cultural foundations and healthy domestic media markets.
It's not a foreign language issue. After all, Parasite, Gangnam Style, and many K-pop artists have succeeded in global media markets where Korean is not spoken. Clearly, if you make great media that has cross-cultural appeal, the role of language decreases. Great media can even be quite alien and still make a big impression in foreign markets. Examples: Studio Ghibli, and foreign film telling "local" stories from Spain, Brazil, etc.
I think one thing that holds back Taiwanese film & mainstream pop is a tendency to play it safe, and go heavy on sentimental themes, which don't play as well in the U.S., Europe, and other global markets.
Example: "A Sun" (陽光普照, now on Netflix). The story is pretty deep, touching on coming of age themes, family strife, crime, and tragedy. It won a bunch of local and international film awards.
But the soundtrack goes heavy on the schmaltz. It's quite beautiful, but it's overpowering and I thought inappropriate at times, such as the violent scene that opens the film.
The sentimental ballad is ubiquitous in Taiwanese pop, too. I think it's fair to say it's all too often very formulaic, in terms of the chord structure and vocal melody.
Why do this?
It's not just because sentimental themes sell well in Taiwan, and audiences there have come to expect it. It's also a popular trope in other Chinese markets, especially the People's Republic of China, where many Taiwanese actors and musicians have found great success.
Of course there are exceptions. Taiwanese underground music really punches above its weight, and has built a global fan base. It's not huge, but it's big enough to be known and respected in Japan, Europe, and North America. Bands like Mayday can sell out large venues when they tour here, and have found mainstream success. I am so impressed, as these guys played at the same venues as us back when both 五月天 and 廢物樂隊 were part of the underground scene in Taiwan.
Taipei club poster from the late 1990s including Mayday (五月天)
But Mayday's international success is not on the same level as K-pop stars. When it comes to film, the only Taiwanese director who has made a global splash beyond the indie film circuit, I can think of is Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Brokeback Mountain among others).
I would love to see Taiwan's talented media creators take a bigger role on the global stage, but in my opinion it will require toning down the sentimental approach that plays well in Taiwan, China, and Southeast Asia.
There is a great video about late 80s/early 90s studio tech, specifically the budget Amiga sampler ecosystem that drove a lot of experimentation with dance and hip-hop at that time:
I laughed out loud at the moment where the host runs out of memory after sampling just a few seconds of a 45. It points to the reality of working with digital media in an era where memory was expensive. The result: Samples tended to be really short.
But not for everyone. Some artists (and their labels) opted to make investments in studio time & professionals who knew how to take sampling tech to the next level.
I know this because I worked at Lillie Yard Studios, a 24-track professional recording studio in London in the early 90s where dance music was recorded, mixed, and remixed by The KLF and Nomad, among others. There was a small army of people who not only knew the studio hardware
(the board, Moog, compressors, gates, etc.) but also Cubase and other
software, which was quite expensive but utterly necessary to crank out
the hits played on the radio and the remixes that were preferred in the
clubs.
Working at Lillie Yard in 1991, I must have heard remixes of The KLF's "Last Train to Trancentral," "What Time is Love," and "3 am Eternal" as well Nomad's "I Want to Give You Devotion" several hundred times as the crew worked through the tracks and tried different beats, sounds, and speeds using the software.
The results The KLF was able to achieve were quite amazing. I was never a big dance music fan, but I respected what Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond were doing. I mean, what other pop act would have thought to meld 70s country music with the club sounds of London, and not only make it work, but turn it into a global pop sensation?
Then there were the experimental tracks The KLF did for The White Room and other projects. My favorite was "It's Grim Up North." The concept seems weird (Bill Drummond reciting the names of northern English towns over a dark synth riff) but it worked:
Finally, it's worth mentioning that the co-founder of Lillie Yard studio was Hans Zimmer, the German electronic music composer whose film career really started to take off around that time.
For at least 15 years, there has been a lot of hand-wringing in higher education about the impact of new technologies on education. I've written about it myself many times (see "For-profit schools take a hit from Frontline"). As online models disrupt traditional college education, there is another debate taking place about the value of a liberal arts education itself. That students, parents, and the business sector are questioning this shouldn't come as a surprise, considering the $50,-$75,000 "all-in" annual costs at many American colleges. What is surprising is the denial that proponents -- many of them academics -- continue to display. The January 2019 Seattle Times article titled "As STEM majors soar at UW, interest in humanities shrinks — a potentially costly loss" is a case in point:
"The swing to STEM is having unexpected consequences. With fewer students studying the humanities — history, philosophy, foreign languages and English — those departments are shrinking. Retiring professors aren’t replaced. Academics worry that the nation would be impoverished — both culturally and intellectually — if only an elite few understand the arc of American history, know how to find meaning in poetry, or can discuss the ideas of the great philosophers."
This type of thinking seems to harken back to the 1800s, when the only people who could afford a traditional liberal arts education were the elite. That changed with the introduction of public schools, state universities, and low-cost college programs that could be paid for with part-time work. Now the pendulum is swinging back to a high-cost model, and lots of students and parents are saying that a $200,000 - $300,000 undergraduate sociology degree is simply not worth it.
There's another problem with the argument put forth in the Seattle Times article, which seems to be trotted out in many articles about the future of liberal arts education. For decades many colleges have created core curriculums that require even the most hard-core STEM major to take a range of liberal arts classes. I experienced this myself 30 years ago at Boston University, and know that it's the same situation elsewhere. It's a good idea, and one that gives young students a truly well-rounded education.
That's not good enough to some academics, though. Quoting from the Seattle Times:
“The broad general education we want for all of our students is increasingly done at the high-school level,” said Robert Stacey, dean of the UW’s College of Arts & Sciences. “And with all due respect to a high-school history course, it’s not the same as a college history course.”
Is getting a broad general education in high school a bad thing? I think it's preferable to getting the basics covered in high school, not only because it frees up students to pursue professional and other interests in college, but also because it serves those students who will never attend college. Isn't that better for our society as a whole?
Here's another quote from the article:
Those introductory classes — refined over the years by some of the university’s best professors, and taught to several hundred students at a time in big lecture halls — are designed to inspire and delight, sparking an interest in literature, or history, or politics, that could lead a student to major in those fields.
The impacts of encouraging students to major in those fields has led to a vast skills imbalance in our workforce, and the sad situation of people with lit and history BAs taking unskilled jobs or jobs that are a poor fit for their skills (see "Fear of a College-Educated Barista").
Humanities programs awarded 5,891 doctoral degrees in 2015. That is the largest number recorded back to the start of collection of such information in 1987. The figure was 3,110 in 1988, then rose steadily to 4,994 in 2000, dipped to about 4,700 from 2002 to 2007, and then started going up again, year after year.
As that article notes, jobs in those fields "are increasingly hard to come by." Yet the universities keep churning out PhDs in these fields, to keep the tuition rolling in and as a source of cheap labor for undergraduate instruction.
I appreciate the value of including liberal arts in higher education, but only a cost that students can truly afford.
Check
out the attached message I got from Amazon over the weekend! My mom purchased a
cat tree using my "shared payment method" for my Amazon Music Unlimited family plan.
What does
a cat tree have to with Amazon music? Absolutely nothing. But somehow,
starting this weekend, Amazon has decided that anyone on my family music
subscription can start ordering stuff on my credit card. As explained
to me by one of your helpful associates, my mom, my sister, my kids can
start loading up their carts with cat trees, Fire tablets, power tools,
SpongeBob T-shirts, and even that MacBook that my teenaged daughter has
always wanted, using this shared payment method. Great!
But
actually, it's not so great. When I signed up my family for Amazon
Music Family subscription more than a year ago, the intention was to
allow my mom to listen to her favorite operas, my dad to listen to jazz,
my kids to listen to Drake, and my sister to listen to Hootie and the
Blowfish. There was no intention to let them order whatever they wanted
on my credit card, and indeed, up until this past weekend there were no
purchases billed to my account. The only person that can "share" my
payment method to order stuff is my lovely wife, who I explicitly
granted permission to make purchases on my shared Amazon Prime Visa
through "Amazon Households."
Let
me tell you, it was interesting contacting your support people about
this issue. One agent said one of my mother's purchases could be
refunded, but "you'll need to send us an email from your mother's
account only as per the company's policy." In other words, I have to go
to her house to compose an email, or try to explain to her over the
phone how to do this? Let me tell you, she'll have no idea what I'm
talking about.
When I
asked another support person why this was happening all of a sudden
after more than one year in the subscription plan, he claimed it was because it was because she
had ordered a digital item. When I pointed out that cat trees aren't
very digital, he said he would refund that, but going forward to prevent
unauthorized purchases the only option would be to remove her from the
account. In other words, the support burden is now being dumped on me to
not only clean up the mess but explain to my mom that the
Amazon Echo I got her for Christmas a few years ago will no longer be
able to play Pavarotti or Miles Davis on command.
Don't
get me wrong. I love my mom, and want her to be able to buy things for kitty. But she already has an Amazon
account, and her own credit card. She doesn't need to have access to my
Amazon Prime visa to buy a cat tree or waffle maker or whatever.
In
conclusion: I've been an Amazon customer for 20 years and have bought
tens of thousands of dollars worth of stuff from Amazon. I let your devices
into my home, subscribe to Prime and Amazon Video, and use Amazon
Business for my own small business. I like these services and want to
continue using them. But when it comes to sharing important personal
data or payment methods, control needs to reside with me, the account
owner. As far as I'm concerned, the only person who should have the
right to use my payment information is my wife, who I explicitly granted
permission via Amazon Household.
So
please: Figure out a way to make Amazon Music family subscription to
work as a simple way for me to share my love of music with my family
members ... and let me my mom order cat trees on her own dime.
Sincerely,
Ian
The advertisement for Amazon Music Unlimited. Nowhere does it mention sharing credit card information.
Friends have asked me about Blade Runner 2049, the sequel to the ground-breaking 1982 film by Director Ridley Scott and a very talented cast, crew, and composer. I was 13 when the first film came out and it made a huge impact -- it was a dystopian future, to be sure, but one that was fascinating and different than the "clean" utopias depicted in Star Trek or the alien-infused space opera of Star Wars.
Back to Blade Runner 2049. I saw it on IMAX and went on an afternoon when I knew there wouldn't be many other people in the theater to disturb my experience. The film was beautifully shot, and had some incredible scenes, including the climactic, desperate fight scene outside the city's sea wall. I really liked the score by Hans Zimmer, too. He had a tough job, not only being brought in to replace the late Jóhann Jóhannsson, but also living up to the incredible soundtrack from the first film by Vangelis (which has perhaps the most dedicated cult following of any film soundtrack, judging by the mods and remixes created by fans, such as the Esper Edition. I've included one of them below).
Nevertheless, there were some serious flaws in BR49. Ryan Gosling had the lead role, and was an obvious pick (Hollywood always goes for leading men with strong "brands," which it had done when Harrison Ford in the first film). But I believe Gosling was the wrong person for the role -- he was too emotionless and almost mechanical in the fight scenes. Yes, he's a synthetic human, but considering they were designed to be "More Human than Human," I expected more humanity in Gosling's character in the 2049 generation.
There was another element that bothered me. Los Angeles 2049 has clear Asian influences, including Chinese and Japanese signage everywhere, and a cafeteria that has Asian dishes and themes. Yet there were hardly any Asian people in any roles, even extras.
Taking things one step further: Assuming demographic trends persist, in the far future society "minorities" will be white and the population will be mostly black, brown, yellow, and multiracial. Yet every major and most minor roles in Blade Runner 2049 are white, except for Olmos (reprised from the first film for about a minute), the east African shopkeeper (another short scene), and the junkyard orphanage owner.
The 1982 film was far better in this respect, imagining a future where society did include lots of people from different backgrounds and cultural influences from across the Pacific -- and even a street language based on Japanese, German, and English!
Blade Runner 2049 isn't the only science fiction film that gets the future humanity wrong. In my long experience watching science fiction movies, only Luc Besson's 1997 film The Fifth Element tried to get humanity right, at least with secondary characters and extras who were black, mixed race, and Asian.
Despite all of this, I would like to see Blade Runner 2049 once more. I had trouble following some of the plot threads and details, and would like to see it at least once more to wrap my head around them and help me fathom the meaning of the story.
Facebook suspended Mr. Guo’s account. In a statement, the company said the account published the personal information of others without their consent, which violated the platform’s policies.
This is not just a case of China citing "hurt feelings" or some supposed rule-breaking on Facebook.
Zuckerberg is desperate to be in China. He's learned Mandarin, plays up his family connections (via his wife's family), and puts on the charm when visiting China. He's created relationships with officials at every level. His representatives have talked with companies which may be partners or acquired at some point.
Mark Zuckerberg speaking in Mandarin during a 2015 visit
So it does not surprise me one bit that Facebook will bend over backwards to accommodate officials on censorship demands. This is the cost of doing business in China for a tech company. Media companies learned this decades ago -- read up on how Rupert Murdoch tried to operate in China. It's quite fascinating, worthy of a soap opera-style biopic.
Now it's Silicon Valley's turn, especially companies that specialize in communication -- social networks, mobile phone manufacturers, companies that sell networking hardware or cloud services, etc. The Chinese government's survival depends on information control, and if they can't do it themselves, then they force local and foreign companies to do it for them.
Don't think that this issue will be limited to human rights activists. It doesn't matter who you are -- your social media comments, family relationships, WeChat and Facebook messages, work connections on LinkedIn, and other digital footprints that reflect your attitude or influence will be used to build a social media score that determines your level of access to the country and ability to do business in China.
This is not just large media companies that got burned, I know some smaller producers who believed the "five years the feed will be all video" baloney and shifted their efforts accordingly. Some were doing really important work, too, around causes or local news. What a waste.
I personally would not mind if Facebook turned back the clock 10 years, when most conversations seemed to be personal and text-based, and the truckloads of memes, ads, gaming achievements, real and fake news, and videos of cats playing the piano had yet to be shoved down Facebook's maw. Old-school text discussions seem to work for Hacker News and large swathes of Reddit; why can't it work for Facebook?
My Facebook feed: Ads, viral videos, and other crap I would rather not see:
Something I wrote was illegally republished on a website. This happens quite frequently with the books I publish, but usually on low-grade torrents or foreign scrapers. I can't do much about those, except to notify Google with a DMCA request to delist the copied material in search results.
However, when the infringing website is Chegg, a gigantic for-profit educational company, it's a different story. I don't bother with Google, I go straight to the people running the site and demand they take it down.
What followed was a bureaucratic mess. Chegg's corporate lawyer insisted that I fill out some form and sign it. I refused, explaining that I didn't have to enter into a contract with the company, all I had to do was file a DMCA notice, which I had already done. This is the law of the land, and they have to follow it.
The corporate lawyer came back with this:
We are happy to remove the link to your work from our site after receiving a valid DMCA notice. Unfortunately, your notice below is not valid under Section 512 of the DMCA.
The DMCA Section 512(c)(3)(A) requires that when reporting copyright infringement, the notice for it must contain the following elements:
A physical or electronic signature of a person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.
Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed, or, if multiple copyrighted works at a single online site are covered by a single notification, a representative list of such works at that site.
Identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity and that is to be removed or access to which is to be disabled, and information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to locate the material.
Information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to contact the complaining party, such as an address, telephone number, and, if available, an electronic mail address at which the complaining party may be contacted.
A statement that the complaining party has a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.
The DMCA form provided to you at the link below is set up to address all six of the required elements set forth above. You may use that form, or you can provide this information in another format so long as it contains all of the required elements. Upon receiving a valid notice from you, we will promptly remove the link.
This was ridiculous. I had already made the required DMCA statement including the elements cited (link, oath, address, etc.). The only missing element was the identity of the person responsible. The scraped academic case did not say who had posted it, so as far as I was concerned, it was the company itself that decided to scrape the MIT website with the academic case against the terms of the license.
I wouldn't make an overpriced lawyer deal with the problem. I'd have a production assistant take it down, or do it myself. It takes literally a few minutes to do this.
The educational company lawyer was either incompetent, trying to run up her hours, or just messing with me. I bypassed her, writing instead to Chegg's CEO:
I've worked in media for a long time. If someone were to send me a complaint that illegally copied material had been posted on a site that I own or manage, and the victim contained verifiable links to the original copyrighted material and the illicitly copied version on my site, my first thing I would do would be to remove the material immediately. The second would be to issue a sincere apology to the victim. The third would be to determine what process or person was responsible, and to take steps to ensure that it never happens again.
Chegg can't even get step #1 right.
Instead of having expensive attorneys in charge of this relatively straightforward and mundane process -- and still screwing it up -- how about getting some people (or more effective technologies) who can not only get things done, but can also do the right thing by victims and put policies and processes in place to ensure it's not a problem in the future?
By all means, bring in the big legal guns and the bureaucracy when it's warranted. But for basic stuff like this? You know you can do better.
Sincerely,
The illegally scraped content was removed a week later.
A lot of self-published authors have recently noticed a problem with some of the promotions they've been using to boost sales and ranking of Kindle ebooks on Amazon. Once-safe promotional newsletters like Bookbub have apparently resulted in "rank stripping" and accusations from Amazon that the authors responsible have been using forbidden methods to boost their rank - a hallmark of the "botters" who use illicit methods to take over Amazon categories and rank in cash.
This is a big deal for legitimate authors, because they depend on these services to increase their visibility and sales. It's also a big deal for Bookbub and competing services, because they not lose sales from potential authors (a placement in the newsletter can cost hundreds of dollars) but also because they lose out on Amazon Associates affiliate income. Some of the newsletters have hundreds of thousands or millions of subscribers, who like the links to download free or discounted Kindle books.
Why is this happening? Lots of people seem to think Amazon is incompetent, or its automated systems for flagging botted books is set too high, and is throwing out the baby with the bath water:
Amazon desperately needs to be some people on this and stop relying so heavily on bots. The whole situation illustrates the dilemma of trying to beat scammers mostly by automated means. It simply can't be done. Either a lot of scammers keep on scammer with impunity, or innocent authors get caught in the anti-scam measures--or, as seems to be the case now, both things happen at the same time.
I am going to offer an alternative hypothesis about why this is happening:
Amazon's prohibitions against "rank manipulation" have been recently expanded to include unauthorized promotional tools, regardless of whether authors consider them to be legitimate.
I don't have direct evidence of this, but I believe the following activities by Bookbub et al likely run counter to Amazon's own priorities:
Maintaining a giant list of Amazon customers
Encouraging behavior that runs counter to Amazon's own navigational and promotional tools
Diverting money away from potential Amazon Marketing Services (AMS) spending
Running up affiliate payouts
Providing potential cover for actual botters and scammers, who mix in among legit authors and hope they won't get noticed.
We all know that Amazon values iron control over its platform, and wants to extend its power. Newsletters, which are basically mini platforms that depend on Amazon to survive, may be causing too many problems, and not generating enough value in return.
Does Amazon really care if Bookbub et al loses business, especially if skittish authors decide to stick with AMS? I suppose you could argue that these newsletters increase sales, but from Amazon's POV those sales might have happened anyway -- and in a more profitable way for Amazon -- if customers just used Amazon search, Amazon recommendations, Amazon sponsored ads, and Amazon newsletters to find good deals.
That's my hypothesis, anyway. And I have to admit there are a few things that go against it:
If Amazon really wanted to crack down on newsletters, it could do so in ways that don't rile up the author community and increase resentment. A change in stated policy ("you can't use affiliate links or newsletters to increase sales") or cease & desist letters to newsletter operators based on real or supposed TOS violations could effectively end these types of promotions in a very short period of time.
Customers really like the newsletters. To Amazon, customers are king, so pissing them off is not a good idea.
Nevertheless, if I were Bookbub (or any one of the other services that have a large Amazon customer list) I would be concerned. A business model that depends on a larger platform to succeed is incredibly vulnerable to being shut down or seriously harmed if the platform decides to change course. We've seen it happen before when Facebook cracked down on social games in 2010-2011, as well as Twitter a few years later when it decided third-party services built on the platform had to be reined in. Amazon can and will do the same if it feels newsletter promos are causing problems.
Google appears to be getting ready for re-entry into the People's Republic of China or Soviet Russia, judging by the "Revisionist Concepts: Unacceptable Anti Content" notification I received from the Google Adwords team for one of my AdWords ad campaigns for Lean Media.
Here's what the advertisements looked like. I created four simple text ads promoting the book and the Lean Media framework:
Anything seem wrong? These ads are about as milquetoast as you can get. Yet AdWords reviewers or algorithms thought the ad contained extremely offensive ... something. See for yourself:
The message says "Unacceptable Anti Content ... Google policy does not permit the advertisement of revisionist concepts."
What does that even mean? The email doesn't explain, and Google's support website was no help either. Honestly, it sounds like something a Communist Party official might hand down to a hapless journalist or dissident before sentencing him or her to the gulag.
To be clear: Lean Media is a production framework for people who create media. The 50,000-word book I wrote is apolitical, non-offensive, and encourages media creators to make better media that audiences love. There are tons of real-world examples, from an art-photography publisher in China to global media brands like Minecraft and The Simpsons. Even if the book were related to politics or some other controversial subject, there's no reason Google should ban it ... at least not in this country.
Putting on my tinfoil hat: What I suspect happened is my recent public criticisms of Google AdWords about misleading settings for locations and ad fraud got noticed, and someone flagged it for additional review. "Anti-content" was the only thing they could come up with, and they banned the ad.
You may have heard the news about "Bodega," a hot Silicon Valley startup that wants to shake up the vending machine space with machine learning and clever placement. They've got two young ex-Google employees as founders, and have attracted lots of funding.
And then there's the name: A pretty shameless appropriation of the term used to describe the small mom-and-pop convenience stores in New York and elsewhere, often serving poor immigrant communities and offering special goods such as home-made sandwiches and services such as international money transfers. The logo is a cat, which in real bodegas is often the mascot. People are up in arms about all of this.
Let's be honest: If the startup were called "Vendoogle" or "Quikbox" I don't think there would be so much outrage.
Local
mom & pop stores have been under assault by all kinds of
well-funded rivals for decades, including CVS, Target Mini-Stores, gas
station franchises, and bottling companies working with vending machine
distributors. Nevertheless, the little corner stores still keep ticking
in many areas thanks to goods and services not offered by these bigger
competitors, including specialty food, extended hours, and money
transfer services.
However, if Target were to rebrand their
mini-stores as "Red Bodegas" or something similar there would be similar
outrage. It's one thing to compete, it's another thing to play dirty by
usurping the little guy's brand or throwing your weight around too much
in a very obvious or threatening way.
If I were McDonald and
Rajan, I would use this opportunity to rebrand to something more
acceptable, offer a mea culpa, and maybe even figure out some way to
work with real bodegas and local stores (shared distribution for certain
items to lower costs? Machine learning for real bodegas' inventory?
"Local" goods? Spillover sales?)
I was going through some old photos and computer files this morning, and happened upon the following email. It's from sometime in 1995 (didn't preserve the headers) and was addressed to an op-ed or feature writer for the International Herald Tribune (then owned by the New York Times and Washington Post) who had written something about the Internet. My email to this person touched upon two then-emerging technologies, which didn't seem like a big deal at the time, but are now hugely important:
I saw the article you wrote on the above in an issue of the International Herald Tribune. My question is this: Now that internet use is multiplying, and people are able to take advnatage of much cheaper LONG DISTANCE CALLS through a PC, a modem, and an internet provider, dont you think the phone companies are going to clamp down on this? I mean, five or ten years down the road people will be able to buy equipment, combo phone/modems with a chip inside that enables the general public to just dial across the world but only pay local rates plus a monthly internet fee. This will take a big chunk out of the phone companies business.
Can the phone cos start making providers pay for this, and pass on the cost to the consumer? Also, why havent they done this already? Who is actually paying for internet phone lines, and at what point will they say "enough is enough"?
One other question: VOICE RECOGNITION: what kind of impact do you see this technology having on the industry? What kind of timeframe? It seems like a major thing to me, but everyone I talk to, plus magazines, all mention two words: "science fiction" and then dismiss it as just that. True?
Voice over IP (VoIP) telephony thing quickly became a big thing, cutting down the cost of international phone calls and then leading to a host of new services (Skype, FaceTime, Google Voice, etc.). Domestic long-distance calls, which used to cost more than 30 cents per minute, are now free with most calling plans, and international calls which used to cost more than a dollar per minute to some countries, are now free or a few cents per minute at most.
Voice recognition was slower to take off, but 2010 was widely used by automated support lines for banks and airlines. In the past 5 it has exploded, thanks to Siri, "OK Google" and Amazon Echo.
There is an interesting article on NPR about Bob Seger titled "Where Have All The Bob Seger Albums Gone?" Seger is a singer/songwriter from the 70s and early 80s who dominated classic rock radio for decades with songs like "Night Moves." As you might expect, this is a tale of a dispute over digital revenue and an older artist (and his longtime manager, "Punch") resisting the transition from full-length albums to digital downloads and streaming music:
Punch is aware of the new reality, though to hear him tell it, retailers are the ones to blame for the unavailability of Seger's back catalog. When I ask him why he hasn't kept more of the old titles in print physically, or at least released them as album only downloads online, he explains: "iTunes has a policy of not permitting 'album only' downloads except in some instances. From the very beginning, we were very concerned as to how this policy would affect album oriented rock artists in the long run and certainly there is evidence that this policy has contributed to a decline in the format. At the same time, physical retailers have been reducing the footprint of music in their stores to such a degree where deeper, back catalog titles have a tougher time reaching an audience."
If Punch is right about the state of the industry, Seger is in a pickle: The priorities of iTunes and Spotify might have changed the way people listen in the digital era, but those new priorities make it harder for him to argue for a reversal for the sake of Seger's back catalog. And if shrinking physical retail space means it's harder to market Seger's early LPs, letting them all fall out of print only makes it harder for anyone hear them as the artist intended. In the name of preserving his client's vision as an album artist, compilations have become the default option in both environments, causing the old albums to fade in favor of individual songs.
Aside from major artists like Seger, something I have noticed is many indie artists have not made the transition to digital downloads or streaming. I've seen lots of good stuff missing from Spotify, Amazon Music (streaming), and the old Apple Music (digital downloads) including early albums by the Lemonheads (originally released by TAANG records in the 80s), Kula Shaker's Summer Sun EP from 1997, and Christopher Parkening's Parkening Plays Bach LP from 1990.
What many of these recordings have in common is they were originally released on independent labels. I don't know if the labels are no longer in operation, or whether the rights reverted back to the artist or to another entity during a sale or special distribution deal. Whatever the case, important recordings are no longer accessible unless you have the LP, CD, cassette, or DAT (!) from 20 or 25 years ago ... or can find it on YouTube.
I think moving up the format ladder has always been problematic for smaller labels. I remember when Dischord started selling CDs I got the Minor Threat album which didn't have a barcode on the back of the CD case. It also came with a historical booklet so fat it almost didn't fit in the clear plastic case. They were just kind of flying by the seat of their pants.
One of my neighbors happens to be a former member of the Boston indie band O Positive. When I asked him why I couldn't get their songs on iTunes he said the singer (who now happens to be a lawyer) said it was too troublesome to sort out the paperwork and files (this is before Distrokid came on the scene). I just checked Amazon Music and only one of their albums is there, which happens to be their major label release on Epic/Sony. The indie stuff is still MIA.
