Torture doesn't rank in the bottom half of CC's catalog if you're not a Chris Barnes fan, and I can't stand the guy.
Phantom Antichrist did nothing for me, though. It sounds like the band got together and said "OKAY GUYS, WE NEED TO WRITE SOME FRESH CHORUSES TO PLAY AT WACKEN THIS YEAR!"
We didn't differentiate between EPs and full-lengths for the purposes of our voting. A lot of my favorite releases this year were EPs; my personal top 20 has 4 of them:
20. Diskord - Dystopics
19. Lord Mantis – Pervertor
18. Gojira – L’Enfant Sauvage
17. Author & Punisher – Ursus Americanus
16. Gaza – No Absolutes in Human Suffering
15. Witch Mountain – Cauldron of the Wild
14. Indesinence – Vessels of Light and Decay
13. Antigama – Stop the Chaos
12. Neurosis – Honor Found In Decay
11. Car Bomb – w^w^^w^w
10. Nidingr – Greatest of Deceivers
9. Flourishing - Intersubjectivity
8. Krallice – Years Past Matter
7. Deathspell Omega - Drought
6. Dysrhythmia – Test of Submission
5. Necroblaspheme – XXVI: The Deeper, The Better
4. Pig Destroyer – Book Burner
3. Unsane –Wreck
2. Meshuggah – Koloss
1. Dodecahedron – Dodecahedron
This was markedly more civil than I was led to expect it to be! Thanks, guys.
Again, for the record, none of this list is "trolling;" these picks were sincere. But for everyone who complained that Pablo Honey/Hail to the Thief was too high (man, you guys hate Pablo Honey), or that In Rainbows/King of Limbs was too low, I have a message:
YOUR TEARS ARE SO YUMMY AND SWEET! OH, THE TEARS OF UNFATHOMABLE SADNESS!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owzhYNcd4OM
I admittedly don't pay terribly close attention to bands' relative sales figures. When you say: "Grizzly Bear isn’t in a common situation — there are many bands on their level (and even “lower”) that enjoy monetary success," who do you have in mind? What makes these bands/groups different from Grizzly Bear? Do they have lower overhead? (For instance, if we're talking about a DJ/producer, there's one band member and almost no gear to deal with, which saves a lot of money.) Or is there something else that's fundamentally different about their model? If so, that might be a good place to start, at least for the way that bands should handle what money they do acquire.
If someone does come up with a way to monetize rock music more effectively that I consider feasible, I'll get behind it. You're right that I don't have one, or I'd be trying to tell everyone about it. And even though nobody has, I'm still dead set on making music. That's where my fatalism comes from—even though I wish things were different, I have to deal with them as they are.
I think I made it pretty clear that I don't particularly like the way things are. Believe it or not, I don't enjoy having to bust my ass all day before going to band practice or woodshedding at home. I don't do it because I think it keeps my art "pure" (not sure where you got that idea). I do it because I need to eat, and if I want to eat, I need to work. I care about the facts on the ground, not ideals. Screeching about how we need to respect the idea that music has value doesn't put food on my table; it doesn't pay rent on my apartment or my practice space; it doesn't subsidize gear repairs. It's just useless noise.
So I ask you, as I've asked others here: what should we do to increase musicians' financial return on their work? What, specifically, should we change? I don't want more hand-waving about 'corporate hijacking' or about how things were better back in the day. I want a specific proposal that you think will give sub-superstar-level musicians the financial wherewithall to quit their day jobs and spend all day making music. Do you have one? Or do you think that us non-rockstars should just throw in the towel, since we can't possibly be doing anything artistically worthwhile if we need to hold a job at the same time?
I don't think this is accurate. People are recording and releasing more music today than they ever have; this suggests that they're so interested in music that they're willing to sacrifice time and money to create it. The trend you're noticing, I think, is audience atomization, not audience reduction. Because there's such a broad variety of easily-available music these days, our tastes grow increasingly specific and granular. It's harder to draw fifty thousand people to a concert when there are nine other concerts going on in town on the same night; instead, every concert draws five thousand.
Chris Anderson's excellent book The Long Tail has a lot more to say about this idea, if you're interested: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-long-tail-chris-anderson/1007881104?cm_mmc=googlepla-_-book-_-q000000633-_-9781401302375&cm_mmca2=pla&ean=9781401302375&r=1
Yes, if people could get into sporting events for free, athlete pay would likely fall as a result. If there were dozens of comparable leagues competing for the same group of fans, athlete pay would likely fall as well. If home viewers found a way to block out the advertising that flocks every broadcast, advertisers would pull their support, and athlete pay would ultimately fall. Fortunately for LeBron James and Tom Brady, none of these things have come to pass. But maybe they will.
This stuff is basic economics. Music is incredibly abundant and accessible to consumers, so they aren't willing to pay much for it, no matter how costly it is to produce.
What action would you recommend that we take? Not being snide; I'm genuinely curious. This conversation tends to get as far as "let's taken action!" and then screeches to a halt. Should we lobby the federal government to start providing NEA grants for rock bands? It'd be nice if we had those, but they're a band-aid (har) fix, and a scarcely attainable one at that. The NEA is hanging on by a thread as is.
You might like this interview with Joe Cardamone of The Icarus Line, whose thinking seems to come from a similar place to yours: http://thequietus.com/articles/06914-icarus-line-music-industry
Musicians routinely exhort their fans to actually pay for music—I can't count the number of times I've seen a touring band beg an audience to forgo the next beer or two and buy a CD, just so that the band can afford food and gas. I'm sure such tactics work on some percentage of the audience, but not a large enough percentage to turn the tide, I fear.
I definitely agree that the digital revolution has brought plenty of good with the bad. Here's a piece that I wrote last year about the benefits of the new model. Since I wrote it for a metal site, it's focused on metal, but I think my points apply across genres:
http://www.invisibleoranges.com/2011/10/top-5-advantages-of-digital-music/
Perhaps it was a little unclear, but 6 (I think) of the video streams above will actually stream the whole movie in question! I believe that I Am Trying to Break Your Heart and Cure For Pain are the only two that aren't accessible on Netflix/Youtube/Vimeo.
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