t bone burnett

FMC #7: Best of Future of Music Summit 2010 – The Fammys

by David D. on October 28, 2010

As October spins down, MMT wraps up our first-ever Future of Music Month with the Fammy Awards, recognizing the best of the 2010 Future of Music Coalition Policy Summit.

Best Reverb: T Bone Burnett - for his conversation with Greg Kot, which echoed throughout the Summit and blogosphere long after he left the stage.

Best Advice: Jill Sobule - (on how to deal with a stalker)

“Put ‘em to work.  Have them carry your equipment.  They’ll get tired of you real quick…”

Best URL:  Christen Lien (Violist) – itsnotaviolin.com

Best Comeback: Damian Kulash (OK Go)

Question from audience member and OK Go fan begins with:

“I have a limited amount of income…”

Damian: “And I want more of it!”

Best Photographer: Puck (no competition, really…)

Best Answer: Erin McKeown – (Monsters of Data Panel) asked how she reacts to “a billion points of data”:

“I react with suspicion and ambivalence.”

Best Show: Tim Quirk and Mark Mullins (Producers) – “Dear New Orleans” Benefit Concert

Best Camera Phone Video: Blackbirds – Erin McKeown and Bonearama (hey, what fun is it being executive editor if you can’t give yourself an award once in a while?)

Best Dressed: T Bone Burnett (no competition, seriously…)

This is the point where we would normally wrap up our coverage of the 2010 Future of Music summit with a thoughtful analysis and recap.  But that’s already been done, and done exceedingly well.  So the final Fammy of the evening goes to…

Best Wrap-Up: Paul Rapp (Rapp on This) – “Future of Music 10“

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FMC #6: T Bone Burnett – The Complete Conversation

by David D. on October 15, 2010

Great, high-quality video of T Bone’s conversation with Greg Kot, courtesy of the Future Of Music Coalition and our friends at web.illish.us/.

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FMC #5: T Bone Burnett vs. the Hypebot Commenters

by David D. on October 14, 2010

“Would you consider the possibility that I wasn’t saying something stupid?”

On Tuesday, Hypebot posted the T Bone Burnett videos I shot at the FMC Policy Summit, which drew some spirited comments from their readers.  Yesterday, T Bone was in flight, and spent about an hour replying to many of those comments.

T Bone showed remarkable restraint in his replies, especially considering the tone and tenor of some of the comments (people were alternately telling T Bone to “grow up” and that he was “too old to get it.”  The most interesting bits are excerpted below, you can find all of the exchanges here.

On the FMC talk…

I am on a plane for five hours and thought I’d take a few minutes to respond to a few of the posts on this web log beginning with yours.  I said that if I were starting off today, knowing what I know now, I would stay completely off the internet.  That, of course, is not possible.  So what do you think I was saying?

Would you consider the possibility that I wasn’t saying something stupid?  If you are a musician, I am on your side.  I am fighting for a fairer, more ethical future for musicians.  I have been doing this for a long time, and I have to say, in all honesty, that as larcenous as the record companies have been, the internet makes them look like Robin Hoods.  I am fully aware of the possibilities of putting together and managing a database on the Internet.  The Internet is a powerful tool for sharing information- great for research.  It is, however, an indisputable fact that digital technology does not capture music as fully as analogue technology.  If one can’t hear the difference between a tape recording and an mp3, he should not quit his day job.  It is also inarguable that every copy on the internet is by the nature of the technology- free.

Digital is not the end of technology.  In my view, for music, it is a detour.  There are better sounding, more stable, more robust technologies to store music available now, and there are many possibilities for the future.

I have spent a great deal of time for the last twenty or so years thinking about and dealing with this issue.  The strategy I outlined at the Future of Music conference was meant for anyone who understood what I was getting at.  For those who couldn’t hear it, it was no advice at all.  I am not standing in anyone’s way.

On the Internet…

Though I would wish it to be so, I do not believe that the internet is ushering in a world of peace and harmony and community. At the moment it looks most like an advertising platform.

The internet, is at this moment, an amateur medium. I trust that some day, this internet, or another one, will turn into something strong and filled with beauty and truth. As things stand, though there are the occasional bright spots (such as this from Arcade Fire http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/ ), it is fragile and filled with nonformation. We can see this by the defensiveness (and offensiveness) of many of its proponents. At any rate, by any standards, it is a medium of extremely low quality, as exemplified by the unlistenable mp3 format.

I hope the best for the future, but I do not have the kind of fervid belief in technology that causes the citizens of iTopia to behave in as close minded, threatened, and hostile a way as fundamentalists in any other religion.

On his MySpace Page…

We have had that myspace page for a few years. We have been trying to cancel the account for weeks. They have not shut it off. I suspect that’s because they are selling ads on the site.

On Self-Promotion…

If you are a hack, all the self promotion in the world will only let more people know what a self promoting hack you are.

If you are a good musician, work until you are great- as great as Chris Thile, as great as the Punch Brothers. You won’t have much of a problem getting people to notice you then.

On the Future of Music…

Technology changes every few years.  (Do you have anything to play your floppy discs on?  Do you think there will be mp3 players in twenty years?  In five years?  I don’t).  It is crucial to me as a musician that my work be of the highest possible quality.  It is crucial to me as a recording artist that my music be recorded and stored (and distributed, if I choose to distribute it) on the strongest possible medium.  How other people copy and distribute it (if you allow that) is another matter entirely.

The future of music is analogue.  Guitars are analogue.  Pianos are analogue.  Drums are analogue.  Music is analogue.  We are analogue.

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FMC #3: T Bone Burnett vs. the Machines

by David D. on October 6, 2010

Flippant, Wild, or Profound?

At the tip of the pyramid - photo by MMT

After reading T Bone Burnett’s thoughts on digital music in my previous post, you can imagine that his talk raised some eyebrows.  At the end of the video clip below, you may hear something that sounds like all the air being sucked out of the room — that’s how it felt in Lohrfink Auditorium.

Yesterday, one of the presenters on “The Changing Nature of Artist Compensation” panel referred to him as “flippant”, while another offered a more balanced assessment: “T Bone said some wild things, and he said some very profound things.”

I have a lot of respect for T Bone’s career and accomplishments, and applaud him for championing higher quality recordings.  He understandably decried the fact that the film, television, and video game industries put out music at a higher resolution than the music industry.  A friend who works as a music editor for feature films is astonished by people who send him MP3 files for use on soundtracks.  “I usually reply with a message asking them: where’s the other 90% of the music?”

While I do think Burnett is fighting a losing (or rather, lost) battle for the mass market, he’s right that today’s MP3 files are not the end of the story.   He hinted at work on a “permanent, future-proof” analog storage medium (graphene?), and I wonder how much reality is behind the teaser, and if the economics are practical.

He had to know that sharing these thoughts was sure to bring out the Luddite and Dinosaur comments, so I admire him for speaking his mind.  Since many of the other panelists seemed to be speaking with one voice, it was great to hear a contrary opinion.

While he was almost certainly hyperbolic, I don’t believe T Bone was being flippant.  My view is that each performer is a combination of musician, artist, and entertainer to varying degrees.  Those with the highest “artist” quotient are the ones who strive every day to “place something at the tip of the pyramid.”  Most are somewhere in the middle, and to them, as Jill Sobule put it earlier in the day, success means “not having to work a straight job.”

T Bone said “Art isn’t for everybody.”  Likewise some of the finer points of audio quality may induce ecstasy in musicians, producers, and recording engineers, but produce only a shrug of the shoulders from the mass of humanity.  So for a musician who is struggling to find an audience, being advised to “stay completely off the internet” by someone with ten Grammy awards on their shelf might smack just a little bit of “let them eat cake.”

The Greatest Challenge of our Time…

I don’t want to spoil the ending, so find out for yourself in the clip below.  Wild or profound?  MMT reports, you decide!

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FMC #2: T Bone Burnett vs. The Internet

by David D. on October 5, 2010

T Bone Burnett shook up the Future of Music Coalition Policy Summit yesterday by boldly declaring at the beginning of his segment:  “The future of music is…” wait for it, here it comes…”analog”.

While much of the conference focused on digitization as slayer or savior, and the Internet as love child of the universe and musical cash register, T Bone turned the conversation towards the quality of recorded music.  Portions of the audience seemed stunned by some of T Bone’s thoughts, here are a few highlights:

  • He finds it shocking that artists allow their music to be distributed in such a degraded form as MP3s.
  • MP3s should be free, because they’re not worth anything.
  • The Internet is a broadcast medium, not the omega point.
  • Any musician who uses the word “monetize” should be ashamed of themselves.
  • Musicians should not spend time marketing and analyzing data, they should be focused on making great music.
  • To someone starting out at as an artist today, his advice would be “stay completely away from the Internet.”

T Bone Burnett in conversation with Greg Kot

In the (unabashedly amateur) iPhone clip below, T Bone explains why artists should not put their music on the Internet. (Gasp!) While some attendees speculated that Burnett was just playing the role of an agent provocateur, he seems genuinely concerned about the decline in quality of recorded music.  As noted previously, this a concern we share here at MMT.

However, the market appears to indicate that our concerns are not widespread.  There will always be a core group of audiophiles who will invest in more authentic musical experiences, but the convenience, portability, and ubiquity of digital files currently allows iTunes to rule the musical world.  When I asked T Bone about these market realities, including the failure of premium audio formats such as DVD Audio and SACD, he said basically that it’s not over yet.

T Bone believes we are in an interregnum, a place where the old hasn’t died, and the new has yet to be born.  In this case, the old are the MP3 files, that have been around for about 20 years, and the new will be a strong, future-proof analog storage medium.  In the meantime…er, interregnum, music should not sold or stored in any format below 24 bit/96 kHz.  Bring on the new!

Next, we will look at what T Bone believes may be the biggest challenge of our times, in T Bone vs. the Machines.

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