I have nothing against MP3s — for one thing, it would be like arguing with the wind, and the convenience of sorting through the 11,345 songs on my iTunes is unbeatable. All I have to do is think of something to hear it. But there’s also no denying the compromise in fidelity caused by all that convenient compression. Wondering just what gets lost in the format change, I spent a week listening to music on vinyl, CD and iTunes (AAC files at a low bit rate, 128 — “kinda shitty,” says the office iPod jockey). I used a pair of  Thiel CS1.6 tower speakers — great bass — but the results were similar with the bookshelf speakers I use every day.

I started with one of my favorite records of the year, LCD Soundsystem’s Sound of Silver. (more…)

Here are a few of the records you won’t be shopping for in the next week or two: Mariah Carey, Madonna, Green Day, Mary J. Blige, Eve, Usher and Nicole Scherzinger. Some of these — like Green Day and Madonna as well as the Coldplay, U2 and Eminem albums that retailers, labels and fans had on their wish lists — were never really likely to come out this year. But except for Usher, the rest had release dates set for the weeks before Thanksgiving weekend — traditionally the kickoff for holiday shopping. They’ll either arrive in December (Blige) or sometime next year (Scherzinger, Carey, Eve), but what’s usually superstar season in the record business is shaping up as one of the slowest periods in a long time.

It’s slow all over, with The New York Times reporting this fall as one of the worst retail periods in decades. But if sweaters and flat-screen TVs aren’t selling, it’s not because they aren’t in the stores. This year, an unusual number of big releases have drifted further and further back on the calendar, and while of course it’s a gamble to put what is still, after all, an artistic endeavor on a schedule, it’s also strange to release three singles in a four-month period and turn up on magazine covers with no album in sight, which is the case with Pussycat Dolls singer Scherzinger, whose solo debut was slated for October, then November, then December and now February. What’s going on? (more…)

It took six minutes. First I had to install the Amazon MP3 Downloader, a simple three-click process that dragged on longer than it should have because the page loaded so slowly. Then came a free song to show me how easily it worked (”Energy,” by the Apples in Stereo, though I thought I was going to get to choose any song when I pushed the button). And then I bought the number-ten downloaded album on Amazon’s new MP3 service, Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here. This was loaded directly onto my iTunes in high-quality MP3s, with no Digital Rights Management restrictions. Because its forty-four minutes are split across just five tracks, it cost me $4.45.

The same album costs $11.99 on iTunes, though how long before that price drops? (more…)

On October 1st, Radiohead announced that fans could pay a price of their choosing for the new In Rainbows. Three days later, the verdict in the first RIAA suit against an illegal downloader to actually go to trial came in, and Jammie Thomas, a thirty-year-old single mom of two, was socked with a $220,000 judgment for sharing twenty-four tracks. Early estimates had Radiohead buyers paying an average of $10 for the album, or $1 per song. Thomas will have to pay $9,250 per song.

Radiohead and Jammie Thomas are symbols of the same thing: how directionless the industry as a whole has become. Whatever it turns out to be, Radiohead’s move played in the media as a death knell for the major labels, as Trent Reznor and Madonna immediately announced they would follow suit and find new ways to release their music. It’s unclear how many other bands could dump their labels, and it’s worth noting that all three of these artists are bigger touring than album acts these days, and they got to that level with years of record-company support. It’s also interesting that the best business mind in the bunch — that would be Madonna — simply switched conglomerates, from no-longer-a-superpower Warner Bros. to no-longer-called-Clear Channel Live Nation.

What is a label for? (more…)

“I always felt that the musician’s job, as I experienced it growing up, was to provide an alternative source of information,” Bruce Springsteen told Rolling Stone three years ago, on the eve of the Vote for Change Tour. As the war in Iraq drags on with no end in sight and no hope for anything resembling peace, rock & roll is doing just that.

Springsteen and John Fogerty have both just released new albums that draw some of their strength from a direct return to their early music, and have something else in common as well: They both address the war in Iraq. Springsteen and Fogerty were born just four years apart — Springsteen in 1949 and Fogerty in 1945 — but by the time Springsteen put out his debut in 1973, Fogerty’s Creedence Clearwater Revival had just called it quits. Both are artists who — from the start — were able to be at once current and out of step, looking backward to shape their styles, Fogerty to Fifties rockabilly and Springsteen to Sixties R&B-driven rock.

Fogerty’s Revival — the title a clear nod to his rapprochement with the CCR sound — slaps at George W. Bush explicitly, using rock & roll as weapon. (more…)

Since details about VMA-night fights are still coming to light, Rock Daily isn’t quite done with the Vegas fiasco we covered exhaustively earlier this month. Here’s Joe Levy’s take:

It’s hard to say exactly which was a stranger moment at the MTV Video Music Awards: a short shot of the Foo Fighters with Serj Tankian on vocals flailing away at the Dead Kennedys’ “Holiday in Cambodia” — a twenty-seven-year-old snotty punk put-down of American consumerism — or Justin Timberlake chastising MTV for the second time in one night for not playing enough videos by declaiming that we don’t need more “Simpsonson reality television.” Both said plenty about how strained, odd and useless the VMAs have become: The attacks now come from within.

Was it a good idea to stage the show in a Vegas hotel and run the red carpet through the casino, a place Lord knows how many MTV viewers (to say nothing of underage performers like Chris Brown and Rihanna) aren’t legally allowed to enter? What about shrifting off the most interesting performers — Kanye West, Timberlake, the Foos and Fall Out Boy (who, whatever you think of them, at least swung for the fences like they believed the occasion was important and tuning their guitars wasn’t) — to “fantasy suites,” cutting to them for only a minute or so at times as bumpers before commercials? And who let Alicia Keys onstage wearing Gene Simmons’ boots, Diana Ross’ leggings and Jimi Hendrix’s headband? (more…)