Whether he's a "shameless slobberer" is neither here nor there. He was doing tests with OTHER people. Don't let your bias assume his bias.
BUT...that said, teenager-with-earbuds is naturally going to hear less of a difference than the guy who spends his evenings in a tuned room with a $3000 turntable and Dynaudio speakers. Hearing the one woman self-describe as a millennial kind of sealed the fact that he wasn't seeking out the actual audience who knows and cares about nuanced sound.
I'd want to see results from the people with good ears and/or great equipment, and of course, measurements. I trust Audio Review more than I trust Cnet or the NYT.
Stern is a prime example of someone who seems completely different in isolated quotes (and even brief audio snippets) than he is in his personal life. It's become pretty well-known over the past what, 30 years that Stern says things with harsh-soulding bluntness to grab attention (how do you think he got where he is now - by Larry King-ing softballs?), but that he's also one of the most self-effacing people in media. He pokes fun at everything and everyone, straight, gay, black, white, and himself.
It's usually people who haven't followed along that say things like "his barely-veiled homophobia." (Mind you, among millennials that's probably a reasonable percentage.)
And I'm someone who 10 years ago would have refused to defend Stern as well. Then I learned about books and covers.
C'mon, it's a typical Rogen/Franco movie. It's SUPPOSED to be dumb. You're SUPPOSED to feel like it was written by buddies smoking way too much weed, and that maybe you shouldn't have had to pay full price to sit through it.
Just also know that there's an entire segment of young American males who think this stuff is genius because it sounds just what they and their bros come up with over herb and pizza on a Saturday night.
It's not even being "politically correct." All Smith was trying to do was be the responsible adult in the room, and there's been such a resulting Twitstorm (4chan posters can and do also use Twitter accounts to spread their shit) that it could reasonably be called news. He didn't even go after his bandmate - he just tried to make clear his stance on that kind of thing.
Perez was pretty much just being That Drunk Idiot At The Party Trying Too Hard To Impress The Other Drunk Idiots, except he did it on a much more public scale.
His "cred" is based on working with artists with their own "cred" who SOUGHT HIM OUT as their producer. Because they felt like HE was the guy to help them make a better record.
I'm not sure how that's a slam. It's actually a recommendation.
And you need to read his speech a little better. His own music (which is actually pretty well known) has been distributed almost entirely via independent labels.
Regardless of who he has produced and what deals they have signed, Albini's own music career has been in opposition to the major-label system, period, full stop. It's a fact whether you believe it or not.
(I can't believe I'm rabidly defending Steve Albini.)
I'm not a Steve Albini music fan either, and I've always thought of him as kind of a git.
However, in this piece he hits it SPOT. ON. Especially how the Major Labels never DID, and never WILL, work in the interest of indie artists. They had their own monopoly, right down to price-fixing, that independents had to fight tooth and nail to get past.
For 95% of artists, there has NEVER been any money in music, period. It's a hard, hard Red Pill to swallow for a young guy with a guitar who thinks the only reason he's being held down is that Spotify is screwing him on the royalties he should be getting for his 258 listens, but it really is how it goes down.
Now the majors are trying to convince everyone that it's the little guys who are the real victims here, so that random guys-with-guitars get behind their battle for moar profits.
Peet's has horrible quality control. (And they're foreign-owned, if that part bothers you.)
In fact, I'd say that Starbucks major advantage is the fact that I can get a mocha in Seattle, New York or Tokyo and it will taste almost exactly the same.
I'd recommend neither, though, and suggest you do what a huge number of Seattle residents do: patronize your local independent coffee shops.
Hah!
Let me quickly add my dick to the measuring contest: I'm personal friends with the singer/principal songwriter for a well-respected indie band from the '80s/90s (you'd recognize the name, I guarantee it).
He had to keep his day job throughout the band's most successful phase. He would joke about the tiny size of his ASCAP royalty checks. The band customized an old Econoline van to hold four guys plus instruments, and worked to crash wherever they could at friends' houses to save money when touring.
Back then, That's The Way It Was And You Liked It™.
They didn't have a Spotify to blame it on - it was the taste of the major labels holding them down, if anything. But did he stop playing? No - real artists are defined by compulsion to keep creating.
His point is that the "old way" DIDN'T make small-time artists any money. It "didn't work" THEN.
There were no "good old days" when you could pick up a guitar and make a living, or even pay your rent without having a day job, unless you were one of the lucky few who got to sit down with a major-label A&R guy and he actually convinced the bosses to let you work at a "new artist" rate of 3% of wholesale for five albums (only two of which you actually recorded before you were cut because you didn't go Gold).
This concept of average indie artists being able to make decent money selling albums is an illusion, brought to you by billion-dollar industry leaders.
Yes, it's surprising.
Also, the Music Industry would like you to not notice that he said when he was young, "THERE WAS NO CAREER OPPORTUNITY" in music. You didn't make money from selling albums. You TOURED and saved that money so you could record another album hardly anyone would buy, as opposed to the lucky 1% who got an actual major-label deal.
Now every idiot with a guitar thinks he's entitled to make a living by selling songs, and the Evil Internet is standing in his way. Brainwashed by the RIAA.
If that's how you define it, I'd say most of the world has a different idea of what that term implies.
Still usually not attempted murder, but still...
Labels have been cooking the books on artist revenue statements since there have been record labels.
There's a reason artist after artist has sued their labels for audits. Lazy 1-minute Google search: DJ Khaled, Dixie Chicks, Brad Paisley, Cher, Kenny Rogers, THE BEATLES...but sure, Big Machine is probably altruistically forthright.
Of course, Borchetta's the idiot who said this:
"We determined that her fan base is so in on her, let’s pull everything off of Spotify, and any other service that doesn’t offer a premium service."
So I'll bet you $100 he doesn't actually know what's going on with Spotify.
Wow, congrats! There's a whole Stereogum article on U2 without one snarky quote about the album being The Worst Album Ever!
As far as the iTunes thing, it's ironic that now I'm forced to read over and over again about how awful it was that spoiled people got a free album they didn't want. It's almost like something has been delivered to me that I didn't ask for...
I just don't get the "making music free devalues it" argument.
It's actually quite a relevant comparison.
If someone believes that the act of paying money for music is what gives that music value, they're not thinking of music as creative, they're thinking of it as a transactional service whose value is boosted primarily by the price the listener is made to pay. (If that's true, Wu-Tang's "Once Upon A Time In Shaolin" must surely be the best album of all time.) The commercial licensing of Black Keys music just reinforces that line of thinking.
There are millions of people who can tell you that their lives (or at least their day) was transformed by hearing a song on the radio, which they didn't pay a penny to hear.
The whole argument that the value of a song is lowered by its financial cost to the listener...it's just ridiculous.
1. I believe the headline used sarcasm as a literary device.
2. The best part is how Tyler comes around to loving Bono. I can only think that Tim Cook and Paul McGuinness paid him a "visit" somewhere between 4:15 and 4:24 pm.
Thaaaat's...kind of over the top. In almost every way (if an album just showing up in your iTunes is "creepy," let me tell you a story about a thing called "Facebook").
.
Maybe the journalism is a commentary, a metaphor if you will, for what you believe U2 used to be: brash, overstated and a bit pompous?
The etymology seems to be:
1. Felice Varini gets idea from (somewhere).
2. 1stAveMachine gets idea from Varini.
3. OK Go get pitch/production from 1stAveMachine.
4. Apple gets idea from OK Go.
No one in that entire chain should be claiming originality, and especially not either of the last two.
I think it's been established that there's no re-gifting of iTunes tunes.
You *could* download the songs by clicking the cloudy arrows, then right-click the songs and choose "Create MP3 version" and send those to your Dad, but that would be Stealing Music and I for one cannot condone it.
Also, we NOW know why the album was mysteriously delayed.
So far it's kind of "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb Lite," which on one hand speaks of its tunefulness, but on the other speaks for a kind of running-in-place feel.
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