DECADE: How the Music World Has Changed and My Favorites of the Decade

This past decade, the world has changed in more ways than anybody could have imagined.  This is true of any decade of course, but the noughties (00's for the less intelligent of you... the MM's for the more intelligent) have seen music change perhaps more than any decade past; the advent of the internet, the mp3, and the iPod has changed music into a whole new beast.  

    The internet has become the music messenger of the decade; that is to say, it has become bands biggest advertising tool.  It has accelerated the word of mouth process that really is the best form of advertising (think of the last movie you saw, or book you read, or song you listened to - did you see, read or listen to it because the trailer, book jacket, or album cover looked good?  Or because someone you knew or trusted, a friend, a music reviewer, or a wonderful blog... not one in particular..., recommended it to you?) and the form of advertising that music relies on more heavily than any other business.  The internet has opened the doors to the opinions of millions of more people, not just music reviewers, allowing the power of word of mouth to take almost instantaneous effect on an album, whereas previously the word of mouth power through friends might take months.  The internet has opened the gates to bands that 15 years ago would never had made a break through.  It has allowed every band, no matter how big or small, to have a tipping point (thank you Malcolm Gladwell).  The blogworld and the internet has changed how we listen to and find new music.

This is the power of the internet.

    The mp3, or as for the point I will be making now, the mpFree, has also changed how we listen to music.  No matter how great a band you are, your music will be free on the internet; no matter how cool you are (yeah, as much as I love you, it's not just you Radiohead), your music is free on the internet.  Whether it's pirated music in the form of torrents, just one mp3 on a blog, or of course Radiohead giving away their music for the price you name (the tip jar method), YOUR MUSIC IS FREE).  Free music has also changed how we listen to music in that it allows us to listen to multitudes more music and sample more and more bands, allowing people to have more and more access to new music and thus bands more and more access to new listeners, just like how the blogs allowed them to reach new listeners.  

      By being free (whether bands want their music to be free or not), all inhibitions to listening to a new band, album or song have been removed; when a listener finds this new piece of music, they no longer need to worry about whether or not they will like it... they can just download it right away at no cost to them.  In fact if it is free, they will perhaps want to download it even more... it's as if they are gaining something!  The Free Single of the Week on iTunes is a perfect example of this; people, whether they like a song or not see that it is free and download it.  This fad of the 'free-ness' making you want to download a song even more does not apply to the blogworld as much... we have become so accustomed to the blogworld giving away music for free that it has perhaps lost its luster and we expect it now... it still has a huge impact that it's free though, but perhaps no extra motivation though.  If every song that you have downloaded for free, whether it was torrented or downloaded on a blog, had the price of just 1 cent, I am positive that the number of songs that you have would plummet.  If I began offering the music on my blog for just 1 cent, the downloads would plummet because the reader would have to now make a decision on whether to spend money or not.  There is now an apparent cost, although in reality it is nothing (even the cumulative argument, where one would argue that over time it would cost a lot, is not valid because at 1 cent 1 thousand songs would be just $10).  It is simply this mental transaction that leads to the inhibition of the 1 cent but because the music is now free, we download as much as we like and bands get more followers than they could ever have if there was a higher cost on the music (like iTunes).  Blogs and such offering bands music for free increases their popularity and allows them to reach more people.

This is the power of the mpFree.

Quick side note about Radiohead and In Rainbows (perhaps my favorite Radiohead album... seeing it performed in its entirety was one of the greatest experiences of my life)... or perhaps not that quick.

    Everybody in the reporting world (i.e. New York Times, etc.) went crazy when Radiohead did their famous "Tip Jar" experiment with In Rainbows, and they are still going crazy over it.  They raved how it would change the face of the music industry etc, but I believe that there are two things that are false about that statement.  The first is pretty obvious... it did not 'change the face of the music industry'... how many bands do you see doing that now?  My second idea lies in the first one... I believe the face of the music industry was already changed (and boy did it have a facelift... nothing like a cheesy joke), and Radiohead simply took advantage of it.  It's not as if free music was new... what was new was a band giving away their music for free, let alone a whole album.  This is what has stayed with us from the experiment... bands now give away a single for free to wet the listener's appetite and make them want to get the whole album (so perhaps it has changed the music world a bit), but I don't think this is what Radiohead was trying to do (anti-Radiohead people would say they just wanted publicity, but I disagree).  I think what was genius about it was that the concept of the free making people want to get it was used, but then a little reverse-psychology was used.  The reason people gave money was because they felt obliged to.  Because it had been suggested they give money, and because they felt that it was the band giving it to them so they would traditionally give money, they felt they had to give money.  If Radiohead were to have sold the album normally, it would most definitely have ended up as a torrent and people would get it for free, but they almost definitely would not have made donations... it would have been any other torrent.  One final thing is that Radiohead is one of the only bands that could possibly pull something like this off.  They are so popular, and they know it, and they know their fan base would take to it.  Another thing that everybody forgets is that after just a few months, they took the album down and put it out as a regular album!  They knew that their fanbase was large enough and that they have enough 'completists' that the album would still be huge.  So this is were Radiohead was smart; they took advantage of the power of the mpFree. 

Thank you Chris Anderson for inspiring many ideas for that part.  I will not make any comments on whether torrenting is good or bad for bands... it would take way too long and I am not decided myself (I flip-flop virtually every day).

And now, for the final thing I will rant about: iTunes and the iPod

   This is perhaps the most important change of the decade; it is brief and perhaps not the 'coolest'... (everyone knows cool people like us would never use the iTunes store... we are waaaay too cool... that was all sarcastic by the way... tone of voice just doesn't come through the internet), but I think it is the largest.  With the advent of iTunes and the iPod, music has risen to a level in our lives much higher than it had ever been.  What I mean is that it becomes something you can take anywhere with your iPod and iTunes has given us a way to collect it and keep it in one place.  Where music had been something before only for people who would take the time to really listen to and give a real commitment to music, most people were just casual listeners, now literally anybody could easily have access to the music they wanted.  iTunes elevated music.  There's not much more to say than that.  Even if iTunes has slowly decreased in our interests, the first two things I talked about would not have taken rise if it weren't for iTunes.  It is plain and simple.  iTunes has changed music by making it something that we do everyday without thinking about.  The iPod is one of, if not the, most ubiquitous gadget out there, perhaps second to only the cell phone, and when you think of how many cell phone makers there are, and how there is just Apple for the iPod (c'mon, no other mp3 players really matter... Microsoft's Zune - who cares? etc. etc.), it shows you even more how incredible the product is.  Apple made music more accessible to anybody, and they are perhaps the biggest game-changer for music of the decade, even if we don't realize it.

This is the power of the iPod and iTunes.

This is the power of the Noughties.   (sorry for the dramatics... it's the first decade that I have lived through the entire thing...)

And now, for my favorite music of the decade... and this is just that.  My favorite music, not the best.  Music is so subjective, and I feel it would be silly to make a list of what is the best.  Furthermore, I will not rank the albums, that is too difficult for me... I love all my music!  There are two albums though that I feel special mention and I will call in my opinion the two best albums of the decade.  They are Kid A by Radiohead (if you didn't know that I don't know why you would be on my blog) and Funeral by Arcade Fire.  I will talk about them when I reach them in the list.  There are 30 albums here, and there are certainly other albums that I could very easily put on this list that aren't on it.  It is organized by year.

2000

Figure 8 by Elliott Smith

Kid A by Radiohead

2001

Oh, Inverted World by the Shins

2002

Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots by the Flaming Lips

The Beginning Stages of... by the Polyphonic Spree

2003

Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone? by the Unicorns

Electric Version by the New Pornographers

Give Up by the Postal Service

Dear Catastrophe Waitress by Belle & Sebastian

2004

Funeral by Arcade Fire

2005

LCD Soundsystem by LCD Soundsystem

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

Illinoise by Sufjan Stevens

2006

Return to the Sea by Islands

Everything All the Time by Band Of Horses

2007

Neon Bible by Arcade Fire

In Rainbows by Radiohead

Sound of Silver by LCD Soundsystem

Writer's Block by Peter Bjorn and John

Wincing the Night Away by the Shins

All Hour Cymbals by Yeasayer

Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? by of Montreal

The Ortolan by the Deadly Syndrome

The Flying Club Cup by Beirut

2008

Dear Science by TV on the Radio

For Emma, Forever Ago by Bon Iver

Vampire Weekend by Vampire Weekend

2009

Merriweather Post Pavillion by Animal Collective

Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix by Phoenix
Veckatimest by Grizzly Bear

If you would like me to write comments about any of the albums, please tell me so, and also I'd like to hear what yours are, etc. so make sure you comment on this... Tell me what you think!!!

Next post up: What I'm looking forward to in 2010!