Personal

In world of digital downloads, what’s happening to the album – not only as a cohesive work, but as a physical product? Is it still relevant? Who wants to buy it?

Of all the people to contemplate that question, you wouldn’t expect one to be the founder of Bandcamp, the kick-ass digital music publishing platform that allows any band to adopt the recent Radiohead model of “pay what you will” and “choose your own file format.”

Yet, last month Bandcamp released their first ever physical record as an unlabel, an album by ukulele-ist Sophie Madeleine. It’s literally a record – a beautiful piece of red vinyl with screen-printed artwork, along with a digital download of the album. The release is limited to a mere 500 copies.

Not only is their unlabel model intriguing, and not only does founder Ethan Diamond have great taste in collateral (including Edward Tufte’s beautiful Visual Explanations), but the Bandcamp folks have a mind towards music as anthropology and not just noise:

[The album] must somehow be made into an object that every one of your fans has to own, has to hold while they listen to your music, and has to show to all of their friends. It must be transformed from a disposable good into something your fans will fetishize.

Ethan raises a point that will dominate this decade of music sales. People don’t cultivate large physical collections of music the way they used to. My friends are typically shocked when they witness the number of shelved CDs in my living room.

To get someone to buy an album instead of downloading its contents – legally or illegally – the media has to be more than a vehicle for the music. Record companies have it only half right when they stuff on video clips and re-purposed press kits. They tend to be of a “use once a destroy” value.

The whole point is to create something no one would destroy – something they want to keep, touch, share, and revisit.

Clearly, Bandcamp isn’t just about digital music distribution – it’s about musical modernism. Providing pain-free downloads and designing killer album packages both serve the same purpose: promoting music.

Disclosure: My new LP is available for download exclusively via Bandcamp, as is E’s band Filmstar’s first demo.

I have a well-documented history of spending February indoors avoiding people and neglecting my creativity. I watch movies, play video games and berate myself for watching movies and playing video games rather than writing magnum opus blogs and an album.

That the month is bisected by my dating anniversary with E – now eight years – doesn’t help matters. In fact, sometimes the intersection of anniversary with my shut-in status just re-emphasizes my desire to live the rest of my life as a hermit.

If January is for resolutions, February is for malaise and self-hatred. I’m not sure if it’s a Virgo thing, but it’s as reliable as the sunrise.

It helps my hermit case that I’ve just now shaken the remainder of a nasty bought of possible laryngitis. Also, our block remains under sixish inches of ice, and getting anywhere in the city has required about a mile walk to a reliably non-detoured form of public transit.

Happily, this year I pulled myself away from Netflixing through Lost and playing Creeper World long enough for a Valentine’s brunch with E at one of my favorite upscale pubs, Nodding Head, where we were serenading by the jazz stylings of one of my favorite musicians, Alexandra Day.

So, there’s my one social engagement for the month. There are ten days left, and I am already chalking them off as lost. Maybe if I can embrace the vast nothingness of this awful month then I can find some small delight in any minor progress I make as a person from within its icy grasp.