Cindy Lee might be the future of music
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This reminds me of "1,000 true fans" [0]. A concept I've always liked and been drawn to. The internet has made that more possible than ever with things like Patreon. There are a couple podcasts in way behind on that I still pay for simply because I like the hosts and want to support them, I'd love to see more of that.
What “reasonable” means determines the answer to the second question, but since we’re basically talking about the cost of a streaming service, 4 seems like a reasonable number that maps closely to today’s consumer behavior in that similar space.
That’s about 1.2 billion aggregate “fanhoods”, which leaves room for 1.2 million artists if fans are distributed uniformly.
But that’s extremely unlikely. Typically, this kind of interest and attention follows a power law curve, so the real number would be much, much lower. Hundreds, most likely.
Could a person who is a true fan of World War I era postage stamp lore and still retain a full complement of social links or is there a quick point where the obsessions subtract from the total number of human contacts a person can sustain? Or is it like Sherlock Holmes whom Doyle made afraid of useless knowledge for fear of crowding out “important” things like the scent of every brand of smoking tobacco and the color and texture of every muddy spot in the United Kingsom?
The problem I see if that many will try to use shock value alone to try and stand out from the AI materials and that will be a whole different issue.
Humans are also easily found, being human and authentic, in the real world. The online one is destined to become an AI nightmare of human-free generative “content” from this point onwards.
Game devs are deving games. Music makers make music. Artists still sell commissions.
Hell, even in some more AI focused discord servers I’m in, I see people doing cool things with AI images and more traditional image bashing and masking afterwards.
What’s going on is that the creators of these big public platforms finally found a “holy grail” use case for the ~20 years of human communication and behavioral data they’ve been collecting.
I didn't claim human authenticity is equal to content creation. I meant that with the further rise of 'AI nightmare human free generative content' as you perfectly describe it, there will be a backlash where people seek out more authentic experiences.
You can already see this as a reaction to social media where people gravitate towards private group chats and discord servers.
> Humans are also easily found, being human and authentic, in the real world
I think you underestimate how much of our lives our influenced by the online world. Digital media saturates our lives.
That said, I would love to imagine people gravitating towards local community as a reaction of the death of the internet. I'm actually in the process of starting an LPFM radio station.
> The online one is destined to become an AI nightmare of human-free generative “content” from this point onwards.
Well said.
When kids can already listen to everything through smartphones, there is less and less need to listen to one of the few radio stations playing the same everytime.
MTV is dead for a while as well. So YT and co.
Alone platform diversity is high
And the GeoCities website: https://www.geocities.ws/ccqsk/
It's curious they exclude their music from Bandcamp, which is very different among those other platforms listed and indie-friendly (not to mention far more attractive for customers who want to buy and own lossless music). Yet they then link their entire album for free on Youtube.
I very much appreciate those :)
There are, usually big-ish and famous-ish, bands who do the opposite, only release on streaming, leaving me no way to buy the album, also those only releasing on something like Amazon (which then requires me to get the disk to rip it myself, raising the buy-rating for me from 3.5 to 4/5), and of course also Japanese artists who often don’t seem to care about western audiences at all with their music only available on Japanese sites.
[0]: https://vorgaband.bandcamp.com/album/beyond-the-palest-star
[1]: https://replicantband.bandcamp.com/album/infinite-mortality
As a musician myself, I don't want fans, I just want a vast audience to hear my music so that a percentage of people out of it connect with it and collect it. No merchandising involved beyond the music, and streaming it is free... Social media dictates that all musicians need fans to grow, and that is toxic towards good authentic music happening. Major labels manufacture artists, and assemble teams of people that take actors and turn them into musicians, then the marketing machine makes up entire stories, and even lies about these musicians that can't hold up when the budget runs out. If you recall Milli Vanilli, that's just one instance of manufactured artistry. Now with Ai, it's just Milli Vanilli without collateral damage and artists to pay, the good thing though is the whole charade only works for Pop music, and it may entertain fans for short periods of time, as seen with pretty much all the BackStreet Boys, No comebacks Alright!
I'm glad I don't make Pop music, and I'm working to make timeless music, the POP life is not for me.
If you don't make any money from distributing your music or from merchandising, how exactly do you make a living? It sounds like you're not a professional musician. Professionals could make a living just from selling concert tickets, but they need to be popular enough to have a strong following and sell a LOT of tickets when they play a venue.
>I'm glad I don't make Pop music, and I'm working to make timeless music, the POP life is not for me.
The music I listen to isn't so popular these days, but these bands still generally need to make a living if they want to be full-time musicians, and they typically do it with concert tours and merchandise. (Streaming and CD sales seem to be mostly only good for advertising for them.)
Most musicians are only getting booked at large festivals which don't pay well, they're often the only ticket in town post-pandemic, as they pack volumes of artists together onto one big lineup. The smaller events rarely provide a good return on investment. Lenny Kravitz for example invests in NYC real estate these days, and has brand deals.
However, granted, these are older, long-established bands, and all the guys are in their 50s or 60s or older, and their audiences seem to be older/middle-aged people who grew up with these bands, and also some younger people who found an appreciation for classic rock and metal music.
Here in Japan, however, there's lots of local (newer) metal bands that play gigs by themselves profitably. The dynamics of the music business seem pretty different from what's going on in America.
Then the next thing they put out could be bad and I won't want it.
I'm called an "Apple fan boy" because I claim the Apple things I buy are the best versions of those things. But if/when Apple releases something mediocre, I won't want it. E.g. Vision Pro.
The use of old web1 web sites, small quirky art pieces being left on back corners of internet to only be appreciated by small group 'in the know', the 1000 true fans.
web0: blue/purple links in black text on grey, with occasional HRs
web-1: MacPaint/Hypercard
web-2: -=> T E X T f i l e s <=-
web-n: illuminated parchments
web-2n: cuneiform tablets
web-3n: bullae labels
web-4n: cave paintings
I'd vote for Printing Press to be some 'zero' point.
I never BOUGHT so much music since. It was eye opening for me how little I cared about radio/mainstream music after that.
The closest I've found so far is soundcloud. Thanks in no small part due to the barely-working recommendation engine, which doesn't get stuck in a local maxima, frequently going offtrack in pleasant unexpected ways.
Regardless of whether you like the music, I think the larger object of his art and our reaction to it is terrific and I wish more people could create, discover, and relate to art this way.
It’s a cut the middle man move, it may be more trouble than it’s worth because the distribution channel is a pain to setup
I'm not trying to be elitist or anything here. It genuinely baffles me that so many people prefer to just have a random stream of music play at them based on what some recommender system thinks they won't turn off, interspersed with ads or for a monthly subscription service that may average out to slightly less than I spend on music (but I'm pretty novelty-seeking and really like supporting artists when I can, so I think I'm above-average in how much new music I will buy). That's not even considering how bad it is for the artists, how it's yet another piece of a surveillance web, etc. I know people mostly ignore that stuff, and that there's a lot of industry dollars going into making it easier to ignore. But the baseline use case just seems obnoxious rather than pleasant or useful. I don't know how to reconcile the fact that my preferences seem really far outside the norm without explicitly trying to be contrarian about it. What do people like about this stuff?
So I downloaded it, converted it to a format I could add to Music.app and play on my iPhone (for this reason alone it's not the future of music), listened to it, was distinctly unimpressed, so deleted it. It sounded too derivative.
Since I've heard new music by other artists that did a lot more for me.
Feel free to drop names. I'm all ears (ha ha).
album: Yo Irie "Love Affair"
single: LAGHEADS "Your Light"
most anticipated album: Hazel English
A playlist from last year: https://blog.gingerbeardman.com/2023/12/31/japanese-music-re...
I've been a fan of Cindy Lee's work since before they started the project and were in the band Women, who're a sort of your favourites' favourite artist. Part of the hype around Diamond Jubilee is the context of that band, and the development of successor bands since.
But part of the hype is also that it comes from a very sincere place - it's a full-on auteurist work, the antithesis of "lo fi chill hip hop beats to study/relax to". It can aesthetically or artistically be your thing or not (it very much is mine), but it's a breath of fresh air to have such a fully-realized artistic statement that isn't a focus-grouped, try-hard Event get the acclaim it deserves.
I don't have much affinity for 1940-60s pop, outside of The Beatles, Motown, and the Phillu Soul we refer to as Northern Soul here in the UK. Which I guess is probably why Diamond Jubilee doesn't do it for me. It's purposefully derivative, which is fine... it's just not to my tastes.
So I'm keen to hear specifically what you think the Japanese tracks are derivative of, that'd probably be more my style.
Here’s some great bands/artists to check out (not saying they are in whatever category Cindy Lee wants to be):
Islands (Nick Thorburn/Nick Diamonds/The Unicorns/Mister Heavenly)
The Growlers
Blonde Redhead
Bill Callahan
Cat Power (the older stuff especially)
Molly Nilsson
Lady Lamb
Big Thief
Andrew Bird
Chastity Belt
Thao
WHY?
Mark Ribot y los postizos cubanos
Intergalactic Lovers
Felice Brothers
Goran Bregovic
Kevin Morby
Hurray for the riff raff
Cherry Glazerr
Michael Kiwanuka
Hamilton Leithauser
M Ward
Khruangbin
Also Luluc, Courtney Barnett.
Marc Ribot and Los Cubanos Postizos in particular
The opposite - it is a future that your platform hasn't caught up with yet.
Even Bandcamp figured this out and gives me the option to choose the type of download that best suits me, and I buy much music from there. If Cindy Lee had put this album out on their Bandcamp page on a Bandcamp Friday, with the included choice of formats, it would be better for everybody. But of course that wouldn't have garnered any press about an unorthodox method of distribution.
All that to say: a zip of FLACs on a no-frills website is definitely not the future of music, regardless of "platform".
It sounds pretty good to me. It would be better, however, if they used 7z instead.
flac is already compressed so you don't gain anything from 7z's better compression
you just make it less compatible
If at least it had been FLACs – it actually was raw WAV files, so a bit of wasted bandwidth and no included tagging on top, too.
Negative side is that streaming service may not like it, and people will spin it as a rip off even if it technically isn’t.
Itunes will do that to you. Everybody else had their phone show up like a USB drive and just one drag/drop operation later were on their way.
https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/cindy-lee/diamond-ju...
Because I just listened to part of that album on YouTube (granted I only listened to the first half hour or so).
And I hated it. It's boring, repetitive, and not that good.
But that's my tastes.
Musical taste is always so fascinating, and I legitimately believe the best way to get to know someone.
I've always thought that having taste is knowing what's high quality and what is not.
A lot of the things I enjoy are low quality. Yoo-hoo, for example. It's basically chocolate flavoured corn syrup water. I still allow myself enjoy one every now and then. It doesn't make my enjoyment of fine bourbon or wine any less.
Either way, the lede here is the web 1.0 website and not the music per se, despite the article's title.
Part of that sound was Chad VanGaalen producing Women's two albums, and he went on to produce Alvvays' debut album in a similar DIY, tape-saturated style. Women's other successor act, Preoccupations, pretty clearly shows the post-punk/noise-rock side of Women, so it's kind of interesting to see how the descendants have grown their own roots a decade after the band ended.
Anyway my hot take is that Cindy Lee uses past conventions in an inside-out sort of way as a means to an end, rather than producing a retro-sounding surface as the end goal like Ariel Pink. It's not a style, it's an instrument.
all the haters are so fascinating. everybody chiming in about this artist, somebody they didn't know anything about until last week. like how everybody became an epidemiologist in 2020, financial expert in 2021-2022, ai expert 2023, bridge expert 2024, war strategist in 2022, etc.
So, yes, I can hear the influences on this album. No surprise as they're pretty in your face. But, for whatever reason, they didn't excite me. The disappointment is all mine.
(ps: it's The Boo Radleys; I loved their euphoric, trumpet-infused, cover of The La's "There She Goes")
Honestly, it solidifies the ideal that with the vast quantity of new music released today, that if damn near every song isn't worth the listener's time, those songs don't belong on an album, they don't belong on a remix album, they don't belong on a deluxe edition, they really only have a place in live shows, livestreams, or anthologies when you're dead.
But because that distortion fades completely by ~ 5:00, and the track ends at 7:30, it feels like 90 seconds of "dead space" so it feels incomplete if that makes any sense. It's a song which places its emphasis on the dead center of the track, but because it doesn't build on the distortion or play off of it — it kind of overstays it's welcome.
It seems perfectly normal for a large portion of passing readers to simply not care that much either way.
When I wrote this I was coming off another comment where the commenter seemed genuinely upset over the distribution medium. I think a little bit of my sentiment about that post dribbled through.
Even so, I wish people were more live-and-let-live about very subjective things like music. It’s a big world and art is not zero-sum.
Probably because of the extraordinary reception mentioned in the article and the claim that's being made? This is apparently the highest rating Pitchfork has handed out in half a decade and it's supposed to be an indicator of a major shift in the music industry.
That's quite a lot and after having listened to it I have to agree with the original poster, I don't really get it either. I expected the next Bowie after those reviews.
Have you found a good alternative?
No real barrier to the distribution of music might just mean we're getting less curation from the artists. There was a "discipline" that 12" of vinyl imposed that I miss.
the whole album is timeless, but that solo in particular has always stood out to me. David Gilmour almost evokes something ethereal in those notes.
Music critics also love concept albums, I think because they spend all day listening to music so something unique is especially intriguing to them.
I'll continue to get my music via snail mail pianola rolls. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_ZTrXAxZ-g
(I am slightly disappointed that it didn't get covered in Me First and the Gimme Gimme's Love Their Country. Back in the day, my father tells me, the reefer cars were the best because (a) they used sawdust and hay to insulate the ice, providing a comfier ride than most wagons, and (b) the view, while sitting in the loading hatches, was panoramic)
People really like to romanticize those things.
See also: Prince's Vault (from which I believe his estate is now compiling material to be released).
A dubplate is an acetate disc usually of 10 inches diameter, traditionally used by studios to test recordings prior to mastering for the subsequent pressing of a vinyl record, but pioneered by reggae sound systems as a way to play exclusive music. They would later become an important facet of the jungle/drum and bass, UK garage, grime and dubstep music scenes.The Kay-Sette’s starring Butcher’s Blind
So good you won’t ever know
They never even played a show
Can’t hear ‘em on the radio"
There is nothing necessarily wrong with being incurious, but it's not an interesting or impressive position to hold.
I'm not really sure what the basis of you complaint is. Has anyone else been releasing albums on GeoCities?
I see this take all the time on HN and Reddit — trashing something in the most cynical way possible because you personally don’t enjoy it. Things that an outspoken poster dislikes are always “marketing” or “karma farming” or “bots”.
Why not live and let live? Why not accept that people have different tastes and interests? What is their enjoyment taking away from you?
The bit about it being the “future” is mad hyperbole but, I dunno, I think it’s kinda interesting that people are experimenting with distribution methods that they control. One of the things that frustrates me about the modern web is that it’s become such a monoculture dominated by these giant vendors like Spotify and Meta. It’s pretty rad to see people say “no” to that.
I don’t know if it’s an experiment that will work beyond Cindy Lee (it reminds me of Radiohead’s “pay what you want” distribution of In Rainbows which didn’t really work for anyone else) but I’m glad they tried.
Also re Geocities: It triggers some rose-tinted nostalgia for some of us in a certain age range. E.g. for me I learned HTML as a teenager in the late 90s so I could put up my own sites on Geocities. It was a formative part of my career in tech. It was definitely a mess, though.
Man, you need something these days. Good for them.
“Cindy Lee, a 32-song left-of-center”.
Political music is ok. I love Peter Paul and Mary! But it ain’t the future. It’s retro; retrograde.