Manafonistas

From the ECM website:

Over the past week we have begun the process of entering the world of streaming, and from November 17, the full ECM catalogue will be available to subscribers to services including Apple Music, Amazon, Spotify, Deezer, Tidal, Qobuz and Idagio. This simultaneous launch across the platforms – facilitated by a new digital distribution agreement with Universal Music – invites listeners to explore the wide range of music recorded by our artists in the course of nearly five decades of independent production.

Although ECM’s preferred mediums remain the CD and LP, the first priority is that the music should be heard. The physical catalogue and the original authorship are the crucial references for us: the complete ECM album with its artistic signature, best possible sound quality, sequence and dramaturgy intact, telling its story from beginning to end.

In recent years, ECM and the musicians have had to face unauthorized streaming of recordings via video web-sharing sites, plus piracy, bootlegs, and a proliferation of illegal download sites. It was important to make the catalogue accessible within a framework where copyrights are respected.

ECM Press Office
Munich, November 14, 2017

I have many thoughts about this and have expressed them on the FB ECM listener page, a passionate group that posts music and has lively discussions of all things ECM. This is a very divisive subject and a heated discussion is going on there right now. Here are a couple things I wrote:

I doubt the artists will see much in the way of revenues. I suppose they will be told it’s good exposure and I guess it could be argued that this venture will attract a wider audience. But I doubt most of these new listeners will buy anything if they can stream it. For most listeners today, streaming quality is acceptable to them: i.e. this IS the way they listen to music. For me however, I will get to audition things before I buy, by which I will be able to make more informed choices. I will still buy hard copies.

I was staying at an Airbnb not long ago and and my 30 something host listened to music on his iPhone. He placed it in a plastic coffee mug for what he considered to be „high fidelity“ sound. Either that or listened over his laptop speakers. He is not poor – it’s a choice. This is how many millennials listen to music.

… and this:

Maybe this is just succumbing to the inevitable; ECM was one of the last holdouts.

I do think we’re reaching the end of an era and it concerns me for several reasons. The irony is, while there’s never been an easier time for a middle-income person to own an audiophile (or at least near-audiophile system) most folks settle for way worse sound quality through compressed files and listening thru earbuds or shitty laptop speakers etc. Some of this is due to being low income (which is perfectly understandable), some ignorance, some convenience, and some of it is just simply being of a mindset of simply not caring.

That being said, most people, when given the opportunity to hear quality recordings over a decent system usually have a positive reaction, and are amazed to discover what they’ve been missing.

I do have a concern that eventually CDs will go out of production completely or will become such a niche thing that they will become cost prohibitive. There will of course be HD downloads, but as many passionate collectors know, downloads have zero collectible value, nor do they have any appeal as the „magical objects“ that CDs and LPs, with the artwork and the booklets, possess. I have dabbled in downloading hi def music, but the majority of my purchases are still CDs. As CDs go out of print, there will be a collectors market that will drive the price of out of print CDs even higher than it already is.

Of course there is the whole issue of artists getting paid for their work. As far as I’m concerned the $0.006 to $0.0084 cents an artist gets paid per stream is a total joke. I have friends, such as composer / performance artist Amy X Neuberg who actually get respectable plays, but even after some 43,000 plays she received a check for $1.27 or something like that (she posted the stats on FB). Yes, it’s all about touring these days, but setting up a tour is expensive and here in the states we only get to see most European artists once a decade, if we’re lucky.

Of course, it is better to post say, Spotify links, where the artist gets „something“ instead of YouTube links where the artist isn’t compensated, not even minutely. And there is also the revenue an artist gets when someone actually attends a concert by an artist they were exposed to on a streaming site. So there’s that …

I would love to hear any thoughts my fellow Manafonistas have on this controversial subject.

Was man tun könnte: sich den Klängen von Charles Lloyd und auch Terje Rypdal’s „Odysee“ hingeben, im nur von Lichterketten beleuchteten Zimmer sitzen, Tee trinken. Aus dem Fenster schauen und überlegen ob die letzten Wochen und Tage auch eine eigene Odyssee durch den weihnachtlichen und nachweihnachtlichen Alltag gewesen sind. Jakob ist immer quer über die Gleise gegangen und wenn alle Stricke reissen und alle Brünnlein fliessen, dann steigt man über den nicht sehr hohen Jägerzaun vor dem Haus und geht quer über die kleine Rasenfläche, um die rettende, schützende Haustür zu erreichen. Dem wartenden, helfenden Taxifahrer sei Dank.

K

k

Apropos Film: Wunderbare Musik zum Fahren hier ist die Soundtrack-CD Hell or High Water, dem starken Film von Taylor Sheridan, der schon das Sicario-Drehbuch geschrieben hat (das ja ebenfalls weitgehend in West-Texas, sowie in El Paso und Juarez spielt). Auch ohne Kenntnis des Films ein sehr empfehlenswertes Album! Taylor Sheridans Regiedebüt (spielt diesmal in Wyoming), für das er in Cannes den Regiepreis bekam, muss ich nachdrücklich empfehlen, Wind River, mit einer großartigen Musik von Nick Cave und Warren Ellis. Mein „Lieblingsfilm“ in Cannes in diesem Jahr. Sehr bewegend.

K

k

Jedes Jahr kurz nach den Sommerferien Mitte September beginnt die Weihnachtszeit. Das habe ich von einem meiner Klavierschüler, die meine Musikinstrumente finanzierten, gelernt. Für ihn war es wichtig, der Erste zu sein, der Lebkuchen und Schokonikoläuse mitbrachte und damit den Unterricht sabotierte. Wir aßen alles auf, unterbrochen nur von seiner eindeutig gespielten Entrüstung, es sei doch noch nicht einmal Advent. War es aber doch irgendwie, denn es wurde höchste Zeit, mit dem Einüben von Weihnachtsliedern zu beginnen, die an Heiligabend zu präsentieren waren.

„Halt and Catch Fire is the kind of show that doesn’t shy away from dealing with the complexities of relationships — the selfishness, the connections, the petty bitterness, the support — and the many iterations such relationships can take. These characters have deeply hurt one another, but they’ve also been uniquely understood. In setting the season during the advent of the Internet, there are connections to be made between the simultaneous excitement of being part of a world-changing technology, the cutthroat scramble to get there first, and how these characters relate to one another in such an environment“

– Juan M. Suarez, Popmatters

 
 

„This series at first seemed to be too clever for its own good, but improved in all ways possible, from episode to episode, ending up, from the last third of season one onwards, as one of the most nuanced character dramas of recent TV-history. Even the soundtrack choices quickly grew from smart ass to wise, subtle, and knowing. When, in the last season, sadness nearly became unbearable in episode 8, we can hear, on an old record player, a song by Dire Straits, from an album I personally never liked, Brothers in Arms, and it fucking worked – here – in more ways than the obvious references of the lyrics may suggest.“

– m.e.