There have been numerous conversations going on now for a while now on music and how it it's business side are: changing,dying,being reborn or?? People like Lefsetz and Leonhard have made it the focus of there life. Lately I've been tracking and participating on this conversation here at this blog and on Twitter in virtual time shifted-time particularly with 3 people: Sasha Frere Jones, Dave Allen and Melvin Gibbs. Coincidentally they are all bass players. Can this be evidence of some subliminal desire of mine to forsake my guitar for the low end? Anyhow the fact they play bass is incidental. The fact they they are all musicians and passionate about music and have the intellect to analyze these matters and speak intelligently on them is of course the key . 

Some back story: I met Melvin on Twitter via his conversation with Sasha on the whole "where is music in the digital age going and how the hell do we get paid?" meme. Melvin was responding to Sasha's analogy of music via the Internet has become as ubiquitous as dirt.

@noahharlan the metaphor is water, or as @sashaferejones would say, dirt. something that's everywhere that everybody uses

@DanWhitley I think the point is alot of people don't "invest" much in music at this point in history- either monetarily or otherwise

@Pampelmoose for alot of people -and businesses- music is just a "thing" on their hard drive. it has the emotional value of a potato chip

@bbluesman re: http://is.gd/lfJ6 music has to have some meaning beyond being a commodity. it's the "content" issue once again

The other day during my early morning exercise walk (sans IPod I should add) I was reflecting on this topic and some of these thoughts in particular. I have to agree with Melvin that music has become less special and therefore less significant in this Net culture we now live in. Music ruled the pop culture of my youth and record stores were like temples with magazines like Rolling Stone, Melody Maker and Downbeat being the prophets. Then if you wanted this music you'd need to physically go to the store, look for the album, probably engage in a conversation with the priests of cool-the snobby record store clerks, and finally after you plunked down your real dollars you had a 12' squared record in possibly a gate fold jacket with it's cool graphics and all the trivia about the band or artist you could possibly hope for on it's liner notes and maybe even dust jacket. Now when people want music they simply click, click, click at the computer and the dirty deed is all done in seconds of time. Yet another variation of Erica Jong's  legendary zipless f**k, all in it's mp3 glory.

Another related problem in this equation is that the production of music used to involve the record company arranging valuable studio time with the band, engineer(s), producer,etc. for a recording that was often dragged out over time if the band were stars had a big entourage and endless supply of drugs... In any case people recognized that much work went into producing the music on that physical archive-the LP. Therefore the perceived value was much higher. If the music was great and the album sold well that perceived value of course were proportionally greater still. 

How about now? So much of the music is recorded, produced, marketed, sampled and purchased at the computer via the Net amidst Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, IM, Youtube, USTream and all the other always on new media pipe distractions,blessings and curses. Can you see how much shorter the cost to realization trail got in this process? I remember I started losing interests in CD artwork when I started loading 10 CD's in my car system and leaving them in rotation for several weeks ata time. I couldn't very well scan the booklets while I was driving. My point is that once we could take our music with us, the dynamic started changing. The Net made that whole process even quicker and more seamless. So how can you have some deep personal experience with an mp3 file? It's a song or music but also just an audio file, a codec. 

I remember my experiences in Second Life-the virtual world which has a thriving live music community there. I was involved as a promoter and podcaster featuring SL musicians. The problem and frustration many performing musicians had there was that they were doing well if they made $20 an hour for performing. The flip side was that many listeners who did in fact like the musicians and were doing their best to support them also knew that many of these people were performing in their underwear in the comfort and convenience of home. Whether they were really wearing underwear or any article of clothing is superfluous-the key point is it was perceived that way. It was perceived as too easy, hence limited value of the art performed and experienced.

So in summary, it is extremely interesting where this is all going particularly in light of the economic implosion we're all living through now. Dave Allen commented a while back that the music business is doing great but the CD business is awful.

Here are some samples of the music of Dave and Melvin

What is "Living Stereo"?  Well the living in this case has 2 meanings:1) as in alive and happening in real time (or as close as it gets online) and; 2)Living Colour the rock band(or their staff manning Twitter). I saw a Tweet about a list of songs they were offering for crowd sourcedconsideration from their upcoming live CD:

"Stereo" is my analogy of the split dual channel signal we shared in this communication to make the whole sound. So I'm following them and I responded with my suggestions to their list of available song choices:

Then I was informed that one of my song reccomendations was:

In summary-great and cool band making use of and having fun with the technology and including their listener community in on the fun. This simple means is something that continually elludes the major record companies. What's your favorite colour baby? Now if I can only get them off that stoopid MySpace... Well one baby step at a time. In case you don't know I'm @bbluesman on Twitter.

Well boys and girls, happy to share this hot live show with one of my favorite hard rocking syncopated booty shaking bands: Living Colour. I'm also happy to say that now that Twitter seems to be making some mainstream headway (yes, not just tech geeks and seo experts) some pretty cool bands and musicians are showing up there, including Living Colour who seem pretty happy to follow back and say hi in the process. In addition their guitarist Vernon Reid who is one bad mutha from another planet and crafted one of the most awesome  guitar solos of all time on Cult of Personality is also on Twitter. In addition Melvin Gibbs who has played with Vernon, Rollins,  Ronald Shannon Jackson and too many other kick-ass musicians to mention is also there and very conversational. I also found out via Melvin's tweets that the Bomb Squad badass production team for Public Enemy and Ice Cube are also there too. So I think it's safe to say that he Twitter coolness relevancy connectivity factor is going way up IMHO. So check out these peeps and buy some of their music, or T-shirts or whatever

Update: Here is link for fairly extensive Twitter directory of musicians and music resources. Have at it!

Twitter links: Living Colour, Vernon Reid, Melvin Gibbs The Bomb Squad

Ha! Thanks Dave Winer for taking this screenshot at this point. I felt this was my funniest Tweet ever. Now I can say that I'm Twitter famous-oh boy!