2007′s Sound of Silver was an unbeatable album but ‘This Is Happening’ follows a similar sound and immediately listens well.
In other news, Glastonbury ticket is now booked for this year! Can’t wait to check out some of this years top-dollar line-up particularly the aforementioned MGMT, LCD as well as The xx, Editors and Faithless to go with (hopefully) massive new sets from Hot Chip and Groove Armada. Not forgetting England v Slovenia on the Pyramid – get in! Good times.
With the unbridled success of the iPod and the up-take of MP3 as the most widely distributed (or ‘shared’, to add a degree of political spin!) file format for music, the debate has simmered over the moral, legal and commercial relationship between music the internet – whether legal or illegal.
The expansion of social interaction and media on the internet – commonly refered to as ‘web 2.0′ – however, has caused the debate to shift into overdrive as music becomes exponentially more accessible to all. No longer is music on the internet as one-dimensional as downloading and listening to a track; users can now share music with like-minded people, debate the latest releases, collate their thoughts on a specific genre into a distibutable playlist and a whole host of other endeavours.
And so it was announced yesterday, that MGMT are streaming their sophomore album ‘Congratulations’ in it’s entirety for free on their website a fortnight early, after it was leaked. Vampire Weekend also took similar steps in January, with their album ‘Contra’ being made available on MySpace.
It’s fairly rare nowadays for a mainstream album NOT to be leaked (at least to some scale) before release so the merits on which the bands belatedly offer up their music has to be questioned but one particular part of the announcement from MGMT struck me as refreshing.
“We wanted to offer it as a free download but that didn’t make sense to anyone but us.”
This got me thinking – why would a band, especially one the size of MGMT, want to give away their music for free?
First, there’s the simple fact that it makes them appear approachable and pleases the fans (see also, celebrity Twitter feeds). Everyone loves something for nothing and if it’s being handed out by your favourite musician, that’s like all your Christmases in one right?
From a commercial perspective, it’s a fairly commonly acknowledged principle that the split is 90/10 in favour of the record company when it comes to dishing out revenue generated from album sales. Therefore, the band themselves aren’t actually losing out on a great deal if someone decides to listen to their album online rather than purchase it from a shop. And who really cares about those nasty greedy fat cats at the record labels anyway?
Bands make their money predominantly from touring, playing sell-out shows. This ability to sell tickets simply CANNOT be negatively impacted by someone logging onto their website and having a listen to the latest track – it’s free advertising.
From a personal pespective (and I’m probably in the majority here), I’m unlikely to walk into a record store and buy an album from a band I have little to no knowledge of. If, however, I heard of the band on Pitchfork and then looked them up on Spotify (a nod to social internet) and found I liked them – well that’s a whole different ball game. The same concept applies to tickets for concerts.
So, under the surface, bands have a lot to gain from offering free streaming of their music, if only for a limited period of time before their album actually goes on sale. Now, the MGMT guys seem pretty sincere in their efforts to ‘give something back to the fans’ but their move also makes pretty damn good business and PR sense!
On the flip side, the recent accouncement by Warner Music that they are to remove their artists from free streaming sites smacks of a gross misunderstanding of their consumers. Statements such as “clearly not positive for the industry” and “not the kind of approach to business” will hold little water with fans who connect with music on a personal level and despise commercial interference.
Of course, artists spend far too long recording and record companies far too long time promoting music for it to be simply ‘stolen’ by file sharers but the steadfast refusal of record companies to step into the 21st century, engage with their customers and embrace the trends and listening habits of music lovers is a very sad fact indeed.
Without wishing to get into a different debate, this selfish attitude probably in some way stems from the Simon Cowell ‘huge-exposure-with-minimum-investment-to-exploit-and-make-a-quick-buck’ style of management and promotion. A sensible move may be to learn from MGMT’s refreshing approach rather than sapping every last penny from their customers. Speculate to accumulate and all that.
Even before a guitar string had been plucked, cymbal crashed or disc loaded (or should that be MP3?), there was plenty of hubbub surrounding the seventh Lovebox Festival. First there was the news that Mark Ronson would be performing with Duran Duran on the Saturday night and secondly the news that Groove Armada have announced that their new album is complete and will be released in the Autumn (after a Spring postponement). As it happened one of those pieces of news was a disappointment, the other (so far at least) could prove to be far more exciting.
Unfortunately after having to queue for quite a bit, VV Brown’s set passed us by which was was annoying but this was offset by the freebie hand-out of a pommegranate (sic) drink called Rubicon on the walk down to Vicky Park. Very tasty stuff indeed and we made sure we took full advantage of their generosity on the Sunday morning too!
After milling around and enjoying a bit of Dan Black and sampling some of the produce from the Pimms double decker we headed over to the Main Stage to enjoy an evening of music which started with Florence & The Machine. I’d been severely put off by all the hype surrounding her but despite the Curtis-cum-Kylie mad dancing I was quite impressed. The cover of Candi Staton’s You Got The Love was a great finish and one of my favourite individual songs of the weekend.
I was greatly anticipating N*E*R*D’s set and I was not disappointed! They absolutely rocked the place bringing out all the big ones such as Run To The Sun, Lapdance, Rock Star and Provider. They started getting people up with them on stage with a couple of songs left and as the opening notes of All The Girl Standing In The Line For The Bathroom played they invited all the women in the crowd to join them on stage. Cue mass bundle for the front and a result of about 50 girls dancing to the final number…all going suitably MENTAL AT BEING ON STAGE WITH PHARRELL! As Michael Winner would say – “calm down dear, it’s only a concert”.
I won’t bore you with what my pre-set thoughts of Duran Duran were – they were awesome and blew the ventricles off Lovebox. I surprinsingly knew more Duran Duran hits than I thought and this made it even more enjoyable when having a slight jig to songs such as A View To A Kill, Rio and Ordinary World. Simon Le Bon did an admirable job of playing the seasoned frontman (as he should!) with plenty of crowd interaction, costume changes and great vocals. And now to the first real disappointment of the weekend. After seeing Mark Ronson at Glasto last year I was expecting something a bit off the wall – a new twist on some Duran Duran classics if you will. Instead all we got were a few “come-on-make-some-more-noise” hand gestures and a couple of twirls mid-song. Quite why he was invited to play in the first place I have no idea…he might has well have not been there. Not that it took anything away from Duran Duran’s performance – they rocked Lovebox and have been doing the same to my headphones ever since!
Day Two started off a lot more sombre enjoying a beer whilst listening to Matt Berry (that guy from The IT Crowd) but slowly built up with Rokia Traore and then Noah and the Whale later in the day. Despite that annoyingly pretentious, Chris Martin, by-making-myself-look-depressed-it-makes-me-appear-’deep’ persona, Noah and the Whale were enjoyable and their hit 5 Years Time was very well performed and well received by the sizable crowd on the Gaymers Stage.
Back over at the Main Stage, Kiwi ladette Ladyhawke put on a brilliant show. I first saw her supporting Black Kids at the back end of last year and she outshine the headline act that night and she again put in a performance which asked the question why she wasn’t pushed further up the bill. My Delirium, Back of the Van and Dusk till Dawn were faultless and had the 20 thousand strong crowd really buzzing. I guess she hasn’t got the legs in terms of big records to put on a lengthy hour and a half long set but watch this space!
The less said about Doves the better (with the exception of Black and White Town) but their poor performance didn’t seem to dampen the mood leading up to GA hitting the stage. Their obligatory mammoth setup was broken up by a couple of short films that had been shown on the screens throughout the weekend. My personal favourite was Gopher Broke (which was apparently nominated for an Oscar) which is the tale of a luckless little Gopher who is trying to nick food off passing lorries. He fails miserably and too right as well the thieving little bugger!
The Groove Armada set flowed, as they usually do, from one orally orgasmic tune to the next (Easy, At The River and Fogma included) but it was the new material that really set this Lovebox performance apart. Their new vocalist is Saint Saviour from The RGBs (we did their website at Isle Interactive) and she did a great job of fronting – prancing around in a leotard with her fluroescent mic cable – and her vocals have added a whole new dimension to an already infinately sided act. The new album could well be another GA classic and I’ll be scouting for any upcoming tour dates to catch their new show live. Of course, no GA performance would be complete without a monster Superstylin’ finale and the 40 thousand-strong crowd were all bouncing along to, surely, one of the best festival tunes ever written.
To coincide with the fantastic Lovebox festival which I had the pleasure of attending in July, I have put together a small playlist of all the best tunes from the weekender. Feel free to comment with your own favourites from a great festival.
Best of Lovebox 2009
1. A View to a Kill – Duran Duran
2. Lapdance – N*E*R*D
3. 5 Years Time – Noah and the Whale
4. My Delirium – Ladyhawke
5. Everyone Nose (All the Girls Standing in the Line for the Bathroom) – N*E*R*D
6. Easy – Groove Armada
7. Black and White Town – Doves
8. White Lines – Duran Duran
9. Back of the Van – Ladyhawke
10. Girls and Boys in Love – The Rumble Strips
11. Alone – Dan Black
12. Superstylin’ – Groove Armada
