QandA – Fingertips

The Fingertips Q&A: Jeremy and the Harlequins

Jeremy Fury of Jeremy and the Harlequins takes a crack at the Fingertips Q&A questions.

As a band, Jeremy and the Harlequins are committed to old-school recording methods and old-school sounds. And yet front man Jeremy Fury is a full-fledged citizen of the 21st-century, and supporter of the 21st-century music scene. I like the juxtaposition, and thought Fury would be well-suited to tackle the conundrums of the Fingertips Q&A. Judge for yourself, below.

The band’s song “Cam Girl,” from their debut EP, was featured earlier this month on Fingertips.

Q: How do you as a musician cope with the apparent fact that not everybody seems to want to pay for digital music? Do you think recorded music is destined to be free, as some of the pundits (not to mention all of the pirates) insist?

A: There are pros and cons to the modern, digital age of free media. It’s easier to distribute music. Record labels don’t have the control they once did to pick and choose what comes out so the artist has a lot more control. The DIY spirit is alive and working better than ever before. The negative is that there is so much music available it’s hard for people to discover what’s out there they might become a fan of. Also, when they finally do find you, most likely they’ll listen or download it without paying.

For me, it’s not a question of whether this is positive or negative, it’s how can I continue making music for people to listen to and hopefully love. For musicians, I think our goal is to keep making music and putting it out there. If people aren’t paying for downloads, you can’t force them to. I think artists can make money off of touring, merchandise, syncs, licenses, etc. I feel if you have fans, then they’ll support you in one way or another. Maybe it won’t be by paying for a download, but maybe by coming to a show. Professional musicians and songwriters have been around for thousands of years, but the record industry is less than a century old.

Q: What do you think of the idea that music is destined for the “cloud”? How do you, as both a musician and a listener, feel about this lack of ownership, about handing a personal music collection over to a centralized location?

A: Personally, I love the idea of the record. I think that there is something great about a tangible album. I love vinyl LPs, but I understand that’s what I personally like. I’m not here to say, “This is how you should purchase and listen to music.”

As an artist, it’s not my job to convince people how they should digest music. My job is simply to make it and put it out there. I’ll present it the way I feel is right, but once it’s out, it’s out. Musicians in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s probably had no idea that there songs would be mashed up, mixed up, used in commercials, converted into digital files, covered, and/or sampled as a beat in a rap song, yet that’s what’s going on. I don’t know how people will be listening to music in the future, so for now, all I can do is what feels right.

Q: We seem to be surrounded, both in the music world and just generally in our culture, with people who believe that the future is only about new technology; people are constantly being scolded that they are “living in the past” if they value anything that existed before 2001. How would you articulate the idea that the past is still important to the future?

A: I like well-crafted things, simple things, and classic things. From furniture to books to albums, it took a lot more dedication and effort to even have the opportunity to make things in the past. The cheaper the technology, the easier it is to make things.

As for making an album, fifteen years ago labels were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, sometimes millions, on one record. Now, you have major record labels putting out albums that were made for free on pirated software in someone’s bedroom.

Great ideas are often a struggle and in the past it was more of a struggle for a great idea to become reality. I think what we can learn from the past is that it is our job to make great things. People will want them, and if they aren’t being made, people will go back and buy things that were made fifty years ago.

What we can embrace now is the technology to communicate our ideas to others. We can manifest a great idea and spread it faster than ever before. The main problem now is, because the technology is so free and easy, every half-assed thought gets made and spread to the far corners of the globe. The result is the craving for quantity over quality simply to fill the void.

Q: One obvious thing the digital age has introduced is the ease of two-way communication between artist and fan. Does this feel like a benefit or a distraction, or a little of both?

A: A little of both. Ultimately, the goal of music is to communicate with the listener. It’s good that fans feel more connected to the artist in that respect.

Sometimes it does feel a bit like a distraction. As an artist, it’s really difficult to stay in people’s consciousness because people are always being bombarded with distractions; buy this, eat that, don’t do this, listen to this, watch this. I don’t know why people would care about what I think of what’s on television or a photo of what I’m eating, but some of the most fan-responsive photos and posts we’ve posted are ones that have nothing to do with music. Maybe it makes artists seem more approachable, more human.

Q: With the barrier to entry drastically lower than it used to be, there is as a result way more music available for people to listen to these days than there ever used to be. How do you as a musician cope with the reality of an over-saturated market, to put it both economically and bluntly?

A: It was definitely difficult at first. When I first started touring and putting out music with older bands I was in, I was still part of an industry that had money to put you on tour, pay for you to record, etc. It took some re-thinking and reinvention, but I think in the long run it will be better for both the artist and fan. I’d like to believe that the old adage ‘Where there’s a will, there’s a way’ still is true.

Change is inevitable in any industry. The ones who suffer are usually the ones who find it difficult to change. I prefer to think with new technology comes new opportunity. I’ll still keep making music. And with the help of the internet, you know where to find me.

Fingertips Q&A: Night Panther

Emerging seemingly full grown from the sleepy, conservative exurbs of Philadelphia, Night Panther is a band whose sound alone makes a statement: glittery, synthetic, groove-heavy, and unmistakably melodic, this is music that worships at the altar of ’70s disco, with a side trip through Freddie Mercury’s mustache. The trio’s giddy, deeper-than-it-may-first-seem confection “All For Love” was featured on Fingertips in May of this year, in advance of the release of the self-titled debut album, which came out in July on Small Plates Records.

The Fingertips Q&A, for the uninitiated, is a semi-recurring feature. More than three dozen artists to date have participated. The Q&A’s sole intent is to allow actual, workaday 21st-century musicians a forum for discussing the state of music in the digital age. We can all do with hearing less often from so-called experts who by and large have huge vested interests in their “future of music” pronouncements and more often from the musicians themselves.

Night Panther front man Farzad Houshiarnejad here handles the questions.

A: The model of this industry, along with many others, is constantly changing, and not for the worst. I believe the problem resides within human adaptability to change. With that being said, there is always monetary opportunity in any profession. The question is, how does one adapt to achieve monetary success within the ever-changing economics of present and future models? Personally, our goal as Night Panther is to create music to the best of our abilities with the hopes of incoming recognition, which in turn will hopefully fulfill the monetary requirements of a humble lifestyle. We try not to involve ourselves in the mechanics of how the model operates; high schoolers and twitter will do that for you.

A: Nostalgia is powerful. I can understand how a tangible object, such as a record, could have an interpersonal relationship with someone. Although, if it does dissipate in the future and everything is in the “cloud,” I can assure you, evolution will pave away these distant memories. This could be unfortunate.

Q: Social media has fostered a pervasive clamoring for quantity: everyone (both artists and fans alike) are supposed to want more and more “friends,” more and more “followers,” more and more “likes,” more and more “views.” How do you personally stay committed to quality in this landscape?

A: Quality will always overcome quantity. Perhaps not in the short run, but certainly in the long run. The youth in our societies today are most susceptible, and yet responsible, for this erroneous popularity gain, which sets us up for the quantity contest of social media. Sometimes deleting your Facebook page and concentrating on your goals for a short while might be the best remedy.

Q: One obvious thing the digital age has introduced is the ease of two-way communication between artist and fan. Does this feel like a benefit or a distraction, or a little of both?

A: That depends on the individual and the band as a whole, so it’s a bit of both. Britney Spears, for example, must get a lot of hate mail, whereas smaller bands aren’t usually subjected to that type of abuse, so contact with the fans can be extremely rewarding. I’m not saying Britney doesn’t have that, but she probably stays away from her inbox quite often.

Q: There is clearly way more music available for people to listen to these days than there ever used to be. How do you as a musician cope with the reality of an over-saturated market, to put it both economically and bluntly?

I think it’s fantastic! Anyone and everyone should be able to have a try at anything. Economically, this seems like a prosperous opportunity for small businesses such as mom-and-pop music shop owners and instrumental/electronic builders to finally make a living off the vast community of musicians we see today. In turn, this causes a lot of crap, but at least people are able to have a go at it.

Fingertips Q&A: Liam Singer

Liam Singer is a composer and performer of exquisitely crafted songs that employ the time frame and accessibility of pop music while offering the ear a depth of aural interest and emotional intent more typical of classical composition. Singer’s is music to enjoy with the luxury of one’s full attention. Where this leaves him in our fractured, instant-feedback world is a good question. Me, I think he’s holding down the fort while we flail through our digital madness phase. We need people like him out there far more than we need the latest “viral sensation”; we need people listening to music like his far more than we need mobs of disconnected knuckleheads thinking they are contributing to the good of the world via their Twitter feeds.

The Portland-born, Queens-based Singer has been featured twice on Fingertips—the first time in 2010, and then again last month, for the lovely song “Stranger I Know.” His fourth album, Arc Iris, is due out in July on Hidden Shoal Recordings.

Q: How do you as a musician cope with the apparent fact that not everybody seems to want to pay for digital music? Do you think recorded music is destined to be free, as some of the pundits insist?

A: I definitely spent some years feeling a general sense of bitterness that I was pouring money into making my albums, then seeing them show up online and having people at shows freely admit to me that they’d downloaded my music from a blog or whatever. But at the end of the day, complaining about it is a bit like when people complain about New York City—you can hate New York all you want, but it’s pretty certain that New York doesn’t care how you feel! The situation is what it is, and all one can do is approach it pragmatically. If it were my primary goal to support myself economically off music in this climate (which I think is a fine goal), literally everything about the way I made it would be different, from the type of music I wrote to how I recorded and distributed it. But I made a choice early on in recording albums that my interest was in maintaining creative fulfillment through the pursuit of a personal aesthetic language—to attempt honest self-expression as best I’m able, and to send it out into the world to hopefully find folks who connect with it. In that sense, the economics are irrelevant. My feeling is that, if my heroes like Charles Ives could spend his life working as an insurance man and Moondog could spend his life as a hobo, I can certainly work a day job and live relatively simply while I write my own songs of an exponentially more questionable value.

I don’t mean to condone piracy at all—if my music has found a meaningful place in someone’s life, I very much hope that they’ve found a way to compensate me and my label. It’s just that, on on a personal level, I find it unproductive to worry about it. I love the album format so I’m going to keep making music that way, and depth of fidelity is important for the kind of work I’m doing so I’ll continue recording anything acoustic in a studio. I do think that music is probably destined to be free, that the album as an entity will die soon, and my decisions are most likely absurd. And that’s a sad thing…but if one takes a long-form historical view it’s no crazier than any sea-change driven by technological innovation. The album—and for that matter, recorded music as a whole—are still pretty recent developments, and there’s no sacred order to how they should operate.

A: I am a member of Spotify, and think that it’s generally a good development given the state of things. Though the payment they currently offer artists is a pittance, I’ve heard convincing arguments that, as the number of users increases, the royalties to musicians will be able to as well. I think any music fan has to admit that there’s something wonderful about being able to instantly access anything you want—it’s definitely been a great tool for me to check out new music from the past couple years that I had been too lazy/busy to previously. I never felt morally okay with illegally downloading music, especially from smaller artists, but if labels are putting their artists’ work on Spotify voluntarily then I don’t really have any issue with it. And like all music nerds, I of course mourn the ending of the album as a physical object (and enjoy the resurgence in vinyl’s popularity). But in the end, is the shift really all that bad? It’s easy to confuse one’s nostalgia with moral superiority—again, taking the broader historical view, music as a physical object was a very strange development to begin with. In any case, it’s certainly a good thing to be putting less plastic crap into the world. But I still produce CDs personally, mostly in order to have something to sell at shows, and because it’s more difficult to get people to take you seriously without them.

In subtler ways, I think that the instant access to music that’s developed over the past decade has changed the way people listen to it, and those changes do trouble me. With no investment put into attaining/owning music, it’s very easy now on a listener’s part not to invest any effort into understanding something that doesn’t immediately grab them. That’s troubling for any musician who is producing work that takes patience, or sounds initially bizarre. Also, I think the overwhelming amount of music available has resulted in more instant categorization. Basically, I think the aspect of “genre” has come much more to the fore in people’s minds when they hear something, to the point where we now see music being produced that is almost nothing but genre, or the idea of a particular sound.

A: The first music scene I was ever really personally exposed to was the northwest indie rock world growing up in Portland in the 90s, and I feel like lot of those ethics have stayed with me,for better and for worse, despite the fact that my actual music has little to do with it. I’ve always remained very suspicious of artifice and self-promotion, and in some sense view obscurity as a positive thing. So I’ve been extremely slow in embracing social media. As in, nine years into releasing albums I still don’t have a proper email list. But I’m not proud of that—at its best, I do believe that self-promotion is a positive tool that gets your work to people who might not otherwise find it. Still, one encounters so many characters in the music world who create the most mediocre stuff, but tend to it like Little Junior Businessmajor Social Media Guru, and it always makes me feel sad and queasy. Though more often then not I’ll end up reading about them in major music publications a couple of years later! That stuff works.

Social media is effective because it appeals to pre-existing human desires. It would be disingenuous for someone who gets up on stage and performs in front of a crowd of people to claim they don’t want “likes” or “views,” real or virtual. Even if you’re doing something intentionally abrasive or obscure, you want the right people to “get” it. And all creative activity is ego-driven in some sense, because the artist begins by creating something that absolutely nobody asked them to make, and then tries to convince people to love it! So even though I haven’t taken to the world of online self-promotion that well, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it necessarily. I’m trying to get better at it, and thankfully have people on my side like my label, Hidden Shoal, who go for it. But ultimately, I think my primary resources of time and energy need to be put into the creative act, and I just have to trust in the idea that anything good will get to the right people eventually.

Q: One obvious thing the digital age has introduced is the ease of two-way communication between artist and fan. Does this feel like a benefit or a distraction, or a little of both?

A: For me it’s been entirely a benefit. Releasing an album is like throwing it out into the void, and hearing a voice shout back is always a wonderful thing. I appreciate every email I’ve received, which is often just a short note letting me know that a particular album has been important to someone. There’s not much one can say in response besides “thanks”—and learning to accept compliments gracefully has taken me a little while—but it’s always nice, and if it comes at the right time it can be a powerful thing in easing any depression/self-doubt I might be having about my work. I’ve also made a few really great friends who I’ve initially met through them hearing my records, and that’s very valuable to me.

It’s true, anyone can buy a laptop and make a record now, and like many musicians I know, I definitely went through a period of curmudgeonly-ness about a lot of bands that have been hyped over the past few years who seemed to be high on image and low on musicianship. That’s definitely been one reality of the modern music scene. But then I heard Grimes’ album, and I thought “Well, this record supposedly represents everything I think is wrong with music today. But I really love it.” So then it became clear to me that the issue was with my standards. The truth is, amazing and terrible albums have been made for hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of years, they’ve been made on four tracks in a bedroom, with a single microphone in the middle of Indonesia. The results are all that matters, and bad or good results can come from anywhere. In the end, I say the more albums the merrier. As I guess I’ve established, I don’t see writing music as a way to make a living personally, so the concept of an “over-saturated market” is irrelevant to me.

The situation is much more of a bummer in the case of people like Scott Solter, who records and produces my stuff. What someone like him offers is by nature vocational; there’s no escaping the intertwined nature of economics and creative work for someone who runs a studio. I think its sad that the economy for studio work is being eroded—it’s fine when musicians record themselves, but I bristle when they start speaking as though they’re actual engineers because they bought a laptop and a good mic. Artists are increasingly missing the collaborative relationship with actual engineers and producers who understand sound on different terms than the average musician, and the aesthetic pleasures of fidelity are being forgotten.

But the ultimate dream is that, in a world where the economic incentive for creativity is more or less removed, but everyone has easy access to creative tools, what you wind up with is an explosion of bizarre, personal, original creative dreams being sent out into the ether. That hasn’t quite happened yet, but it could. I just hope that musicians don’t forget to actually learn how to play instruments.

Fingertips Q&A: The Ampersands

The FIngertips Q&A returns with Aaron McQuade and Jim Pace, who make music together as The Ampersands.

The Ampersands are a duo that make zippy, perceptive, carefully constructed indie pop grounded in the aural universes of smart-pop progenitors Fountains of Wayne and They Might Be Giants. You may remember these two from the song “Try This,” which was featured here last month. If not, perhaps you are not paying close enough attention.

Multi-instrumentalist Aaron McQuade and guitarist Jim Pace have been making music together for more than half of their lives at this point. They both do the singing and the writing and they both were kind enough to sit down and take a crack at the the Fingertips Q&A questions. Actually I don’t know if they were sitting down. But here are their answers. Aaron’s come from New York City, Jim’s from Providence, where they are, respectfully, based.

Note that the duo’s new album, This Is Your Adventure Too, is coming out on October 30th. Check it out via its smartly-designed web site.

The Fingertips Q&A, for the uninitiated, is a recurring feature. More than three dozen artists to date have participated. The Q&A’s sole intent is to allow actual, workaday 21st-century musicians a forum for discussing the state of music in the digital age. I’m tired of hearing mostly from so-called experts who by and large have huge vested interests in their “future of music” pronouncements.

Q: Let’s cut to the chase: how do you as a musician cope with the apparent fact that not everybody seems to want to pay for digital music? Do you think recorded music is destined to be free, as some of the pundits insist?

AARON: Depending on where you are on the issue, the operative word there could either be “destined” or “doomed.” Free digital content can certainly lead to increased awareness, greater buzz, and ultimately, a big spike in legitimate sales (Google “4Chan Steve Lieber” for an example). Unfortunately, that free digital content is usually not provided on a volunteer basis by the producers of said content. Honestly, I personally would probably feel differently about it if Jim and I were more than two dudes, or if we lived within a few hundred miles of each other. That way we could play regular shows, and I’d be a lot more willing to provide free content to build buzz and drive people to those shows.

From where I sit, the fact that anything that can be digitized is destined/doomed to be free is both good and bad. If someone pirates our record, and someone else downloads it for free, I wouldn’t really blame them, because nobody’s heard of us, and who’s going to drop money on a record completely sight-unseen? (or “sound-unheard?”) But if they get it and love it, I’d be pissed if they didn’t then go and legally buy a copy—or at least legally buy our last record. I would be lying if I said I’ve never obtained digital content that wasn’t completely on the up-and-up. But I’d also be lying if I said that those few downloads haven’t led to hundreds of dollars in legit sales that I’ve given to the things I’ve discovered. That doesn’t make it moral, and it certainly doesn’t make it legal, but I don’t think it should be left out of the conversation either.

JIM: Probably in the same way I cope with the fact that nobody wants to pay for anything. The issue isn’t that people are willing to get something for free (even if it isn’t 100 percent legal), but that it’s incredibly easy to download music and software illegally. And there are (almost) no repercussions. I don’t think someone who regularly downloads Microsoft Windows and Office torrents would ever steal that same software from a Best Buy, because there’s a ton more risk involved there and the reward (saving one or two hundred dollars) is not worth it.

Per Aaron’s response above, I’d be ecstatic if someone pirated our album, and then immediately disappointed if that didn’t lead to them buying the album legitimately. I’d counter the “recorded music is destined to be free” theory with this: Why should it be free? Because you want it to be? It’d be great if stuff was free, but people have to make money to eat and drink and live. Arts need to be supported, and the support of music is done partly through buying someone’s recordings.

JIM: I’m not sure I equate putting music onto the cloud with losing ownership. I mean, I guess the cloud can be hacked, but so can my computer, right? I think the fact that it allows you to download a song you purchased onto multiple devices is great. At least I think this is how it works for Apple, Amazon, etc…

AARON: This is going to be corny as hell, but art—and music in particular—has ALWAYS existed in “the cloud.” It comes down to how you define “ownership.” Is music a tangible commodity that can be owned by an individual and and distributed at will? Is music an experience, thoroughly unique every time, owned by he or she who is doing the experiencing? Some of both? All of both?

Q: Technology has become so all-consuming in the 21st century that it seems in a way to be overwhelming the very idea of music itself. How do you guys stay in touch with music versus the technology that surrounds music? Do you even feel as if that’s important, or has everything truly changed?

AARON: Technology that’s used to create, distribute, or consume music is, I think, inseparable from the music itself. To me, finding the right technology (or figuring out how to best navigate the technology you have) is just as important as writing the right chord progression, or finding the right place for harmonies to overlap. And of course, “right” is subjective. To some, music sounds better when it sounds as though no “modern” technology was used. Others think it sounds better when technology smoothes over all the imperfections. To most, it’s probably somewhere in the middle. Now, did we go and use auto-tune on this record? HELL YES WE DID! But we didn’t go nuts with it.

JIM: I think, in regards to technology, that everything has changed, but for the better. I think it’s analogous to television. Forty years ago, there were three channels. Then the technology came along that allowed everyone to have 500-plus channels. Yes, there’s a higher percentage of shitty TV out there, but the overall number of brilliant shows is way, way higher than it was 40 years ago.

In regard to music, Pro Tools has allowed everybody to make an album (see Ampersands, The). Again, there’s a higher percentage of shitty music out there, when compared to 15 to 20 years ago. But I think there’s a lot more good-to-brilliant albums out now that could/would not have seen the light of day. I actually don’t think having 5,000 songs on an iPhone detracts from the enjoyment of said music. I think it’s wonderful that someone can have their entire music catalog in their pocket, and on a device that can also surf the web and make phone calls!

Q: One obvious thing the digital age has introduced is the ease of two-way communication between artist and fan. Does this feel like a benefit or a distraction, or a little of both?

JIM: Sometimes I don’t know what to think about Twitter/Facebook. At times, I thoroughly enjoy a comedian, musician, writer, or actor I like releasing his thoughts into the ether. And then there’s the millions and millions of inane why-on-earth-do-you-think-somebody-would-care posts/tweets. Overall, though, I’d say if you want to get a sense of who these celebrities are, it makes sense to bypass the middle men (the press). That allows you to more quickly find out what Snooki had for breakfast (spoiler alert: gin).

AARON: While it does make it significantly more difficult to separate the art from the artist, I will say that as a fan, the ability to interact easily with artists whose work I admire is truly an incredible experience. As an artist, I can only dream about the day when people will feel the same way about interacting with me. I will say that I’ve gotten a few new twitter followers since putting my name on the album’s website (@AaronABCP) and I can almost guarantee that they’ve been seriously disappointed to discover that I only talk about Pokemon, comic books, and the Oakland Athletics.

AARON: To us, it’s not a matter of “coping” with it, it’s a matter of taking advantage of it. Jim and I have been making music together for nearly twenty years, and we’ve only put out two full-length albums, both within the last four. If you want to become famous, the barrier is still just as high as it’s ever been—if not higher. You still need to devote 100 percent of your life to this career for many many years (90 percent of which is self-promotion) AND be insanely lucky to be in the right place at the right time, playing for the right set of eyes and ears. Even if all you wanted to do was make good music and maybe hope to make back the money you spent producing them, in the past you still desperately needed the luck factor, because recording was so prohibitively expensive. Today, if that’s your only goal, you don’t have to worry about luck being part of the equation.

JIM: I really can’t worry about the fact that there are X million bands releasing albums. The only thing we can focus on is our album. Let’s make it as good as possible. If the stars align and it gets noticed—great. If not, let’s make another. Everything else is out of our control.

Fingertips Q&A: The Royalty’s Nicole Bourdeau

The Royalty’s front woman Nicole Bourdeau answers five questions about the state of music in the digital age.

The El Paso quintet The Royalty have a marvelous throwback feeling to them without, somehow, sounding overly nostalgic or out of step. They have the assured vibe of musicians just doing what they do, waiting patiently for the world to come back around to wanting this kind of thing. The band’s buoyant appeal has much to do with big-voiced Nicole Bourdeau, who sings with a verve that channels many decades’ worth of charismatic vocalists, from pre-rock’n’roll belters to girl group powerhouses to new wave chanteuses.

Founded in 2005, the band released its self-titled debut album just last year, and was featured here at that point, for the song “Alexander.” A follow-up album, Lovers, was released this May; it has yet to yield a free and legal MP3 but if or when that happens I’m rooting for the song “Bartender,” which you can check out via the band’s video.

In the meantime, front woman Nicole was kind enough to stop by, virtually, to tackle the relentless but well-intentioned Fingertips Q&A questions.

The Fingertips Q&A, for the uninitiated, is a recurring feature. More than 30 artists to date have participated. The Q&A’s sole intent is to allow actual, workaday 21st-century musicians a forum for discussing the state of music in the digital age. So-called experts and futurists have far too loudly dominated this discussion for too long.

A: Yeah this is a tough issue. It’s definitely hard to deal with the modern boycott of purchased music. I do not think music should be free. It’s just like everything else, there needs to be money to back you up and give sustenance to what you’re doing. We’ve noticed a shift to live music (i.e., all the festivals) and vinyl that is becoming the new income source for musicians. That’s not a bad thing. It’s cool. But as for digital music, it’s a tough battle and no one in the industry has an answer. But hey, at this second, we’re getting to play and we’re happy campers about that.

Q: What do you think of the idea that music is destined for the “cloud”?

A: There are lots of ways to look at the cloud. As a musician, it’s a little daunting because it’s never been this way before, historically. As a listener, I can see pros to it though. Technology has taken away the artifact (tangible recordings) and made them immortal in a way. So ANY musician is on the same playing field. The likelihood of getting shelved and forgotten is now a lot smaller…because there is no shelf! I feel like I could go in circles on the pros and cons but overall I’d say this new age of transparency is a good and challenging chance for musicians to rise to the occasion.

Q: How has your life as a musician been affected—or not—by the existence of music blogs? Do you miss old-style music criticism, or do you welcome the non-professional music fan into the mix?

A: As a band, I think we’ve greatly benefited from the existence of music blogs. Victory [the band’s record label] actually first heard about us through a random blog and it lead to getting signed. We’ve had some really wonderful reviews and it’s always great to get that encouragement. I say let people have the freedom to start blogs and if you are good at giving reviews, your opinion will matter. But there’s a difference between well-thought intelligent opinion and an agro-nerd rant. We keep crossing our fingers because the reviews so far have been pretty friendly…

Q: One obvious thing the digital age has introduced is the ease of two-way communication between artist and fan. Does this feel like a benefit or a distraction, or a little of both?

A: Good question! Well I think the digital age has let the artist/fan relationship reach new heights in the best kind of way. It’s kind of like that transparency I mentioned. The contact level is so solid that you have to be honest about who you are and I say any honesty added to the world is a good thing. It’s a benefit and can be so much fun. Distracting? Yeah maybe, haha. It’s another element added to the job description of musician but it’s an important one.

A: I would say economically speaking, at the moment at least, the over-saturation is hitting us hard. On one side, anyone can record at home (including us) and that’s creatively really great. But it leads people to feel like music is a free resource and that decreases its value on the market. On the other side, I think the music business is still the same ol’ cut throat place. You have to have a stroke of luck plus the talent to back it up. The burst of evolution in the music world is going to proceed in a predictable fashion, musicians need to adapt and become stronger or they won’t make it.

Fingertips Q&A: The Spring Standards

The three members of the Spring Standards have been playing music together since they were teenagers along the Delaware/Pennsylvania border. Each of them sings, writes songs, and plays a variety of instruments, which lends an unusual fluidity to their sound, not to mention variety to their live performances.

The band released a double EP called yellow//gold in May on Parachute Shooter Records. The song “Only Skin,” from the “Yellow” half, was featured here in April.

In the picture below you’ll see, left to right, James Smith, James Cleare, and Heather Robb. Heather took on the job of answering the Fingertips Q&A questions, and quite thoughtfully at that.

A: This question is popping up all over the place and is a tricky one. Even within our band we have slightly differing opinions, but in the end we all share the same yearning to be paid for what we’re doing.

One of the biggest challenges is that it’s simply impossible to record music for free free. Even if you skip all the middle men and do in entirely by yourself on your computer—you had to buy the computer, the mic, the guitar, you had to spend time when you could have been working a paying job to do it all. So somewhere along the road someone has to put money into the music if you want it to be recorded. Whether its with a record label, fan funded or out of pocket, an album release comes with costs and needs to be funded. So to say that once all this time and money has been spent the product should be free—that’s a doomed business model.

Now, it would be lovely if everyone that was listening to music felt an overwhelming sense of duty to pay the artists for the product that they’re enjoying. But in this modern era that’s pretty unrealistic. So we’re left in this weird no man’s land where music is free if you, as a listener, want it to be. Just a click and the entire Beatles catalogue is yours.

To me it’s like stealing from a farmer. If you pass a corn field some people might be tempted to grab a few ears of corn. why not? There is so much of it, and corn is so tasty. But if you went to the farmers market and saw the man selling the corn from his stall, would you just take it and run? There’s been a massive shift in the definition of “stealing” because of the ease and lack of accountability.

For some reason, getting music for free is seen as totally acceptable— pretty much everyone we know, musicians included, does it. And as more people do it the landslide affect sets in—the “well if they do it I guess I can” thinking takes over. So as a band you start to feel like like you’re being old fashioned or selfish by asking to be paid for your music. Friends and professionals encourage you to give it away for free—“at least then the people will have it,” is the thinking. And that model has worked in certain situations—maybe that is the way of the future. But it certainly doesn’t ease the burden of the thousands of dollars we forked out, with the help of our fans, to make our latest album.

Hopefully the future holds a better solution—right now we’re definitely in a state of limbo and it’s incredibly challenging to imagine a financially sustainable career under the current circumstances. So our stance is this: if you like the music, support it. It’s hard out there for a farmer.

Q: What do you think of the idea that music is destined for the “cloud”?

A: The cloud is pretty amazing…risky if there’s an internet Apocalypse, but still cool. It’s obviously a great way to store insane amounts of music and save space in your tiny NYC railroad apartment, have everything at your fingertips, all that good stuff.

But I love physical copies, as both a musician and a listener. I like handling the thing, there’s just something about it. The content is the same but the the experience is entirely different. It’s so cool to go over to a persons house and rifle through their boxes of vinyl or look through their DVD collection. It’s not quite the same to scroll through their iTunes library. It loses some sort of personal and visceral connection.

But I’m definitely not an either or kinda person on this one. They both have their uses and this will ultimately be something each individual will decide for themself.

Q: How has your life as a musician been affected–or not–by the existence of music blogs? Do you miss old-style music criticism, or do you welcome the non-professional music fan into the mix?

A: Our life hasn’t really been affected much—we haven’t been celebrated or slandered yet by the “heavy hitters,” though we have seen both happen to friends and it’s definitely shocking how strong the impact can be. The saddest part about the rise of blogs is the decline of printed music magazines, but everyone is entitled to share their opinion.

Q: One obvious thing the digital age has introduced is the ease of two-way communication between artist and fan. Does this feel like a benefit or a distraction, or a little of both?

A: For us, it has been a huge benefit—we have an incredibly dedicated and loyal fan base that has helped us fund two records and kept us afloat as an independent band through four years of national touring. So we are lucky benefactors of the new trend. It does, however, undermine some of the mystery that used to exist around bands, even some of our favorites growing up. And that mystery is a powerful tool, it’s exciting and dramatic and every little piece of information you gain is precious and rare. But, especially given the modern musical climate, it’s vital that bands create personal relationships with their fans. They’re the ones that will keep you alive.

A: You really just have to believe in what you’re doing and carry on. You have to try your best to stay true to your unique voice and not be swayed by all the trends that come and go—your audience will find you but you have to give them time, so it also requires enormous amounts of patience. Patience and perseverance—just like all your best teachers always told you.

Fingertips Q&A: Theresa Andersson

Theresa Andersson answers five questions about the state of music in the digital age.

Sweden-born, New Orleans-based musician Theresa Andersson first turned heads in 2008, when her kitchen-made video for the song “Na Na Na” inadvertently became a YouTube sensation. She had made the video to help potential venues understand the nature of her one-woman-band live performances. In the process, she made the use of electronic effects (in this case, loop pedals) look unusually charming.

Andersson was featured here in January for her song “What Comes Next,” at that point an advance track from her album Street Parade. The album, full of similarly alluring musical concoctions, is being released this week on NOLA’s Basin Street Records. And yet, Andersson, embracing the realities of the 21st-century music scene, sees recorded music as secondary to live performance, which is where, as she says, she makes the real connection with the listener.

A: It used to not matter so much at shows because people would still want to buy a physical copy of the CD. On my most recent tour to Sweden I noticed a drop in sales which was disconcerting. I can see that the fan or consumer is redistributing their funds—i.e., spending less on CDs and putting more towards a ticket price. My answer to this is to develop my live show more to make it a must-have experience…something that can’t be downloaded.

Q: What do you think of the idea that music is destined for the “cloud”?

A: What’s next? Is “the cloud” going to control what we listen to? No, I might be old fashioned here, but I like to have physical contact with my own collection. Not everything is about efficiency.

Q: How has your life as a musician been affected–or not–by the existence of music blogs? Do you miss old-style music criticism, or do you welcome the non-professional music fan into the mix?

A: The more the merrier. There’s such a thick forest of information out there that is so difficult to cut through. And every little bit of press hopefully helps reaching someone!

Q: One obvious thing the digital age has introduced is the ease of two-way communication between artist and fan. Does this feel like a benefit or a distraction, or a little of both?

A: I like it. In fact, I utilized this in the making of my new record Street Parade. One of the Kickstarter perks was to be able to listen in on the recording sessions via a webstream and later have a chat session. It was fun to get the fan input.

A: For me, this allowed me to be heard. I am thinking of my YouTube video “Na Na Na” that has now been seen by close to 2 million people. This sparked an interest that gave me a good start. A lot of the work after that has been the direct contact with the fan—i.e., the live show. I really believe that this is where I truly make the connection with the listener.

Photo credit: Shervin Lainez

Fingertips Q&A: Wheat

Brendan Harney and Scott Levesque, of the Boston-based band Wheat, answer five questions about the state of music in the digital age. It’s the first Fingertips Q&A of 2012.

Wheat should probably not even exist at this point. Founded in 1997, the Boston area band has been around long enough to have experienced all the ebbs and flows one expects to see in the career of idiosyncratic, independent bands—the roster changes, the unanticipated hit song, the squabble with the major record company—without, yet, the end result of the group just giving up and going away. If anything, Wheat’s brain trust of Brendan Harney and Scott Levesque seem readier than ever to be doing their difficult-to-describe thing, for whomever is left out there that wants to hear it. I can’t help feeling that the world is a better place as a result.

The band’s most recent full-length album is 2009’s White Ink, Black Ink. But this fall, Wheat announced the intention of releasing three double a-side singles in advance of a sixth album, which will come later in 2012. The first single included the song “House of Kiss,” which was featured here on Fingertips last month. The second single will be arriving this month. In the middle of this flurry of activity, Harney and Levesque were kind enough to stop by, virtually, to tackle the Q&A questions. Both contributed to the answers, as you’ll see.

Q: Let’s cut to the chase: how do you as musicians cope with the apparent fact that not everybody seems to want to pay for digital music? Do you think recorded music is destined to be free, as some of the pundits insist?

A: (Brendan) Well, that’s the big issue facing artists these days – is kinda like, “if it’s digital and on the web, it’s free.” So, as producers of music (and the same goes for movies, books, etc.), we have to be super careful that we just don’t give the store away. The average consumer of music out there probably has no idea what goes into making a finished product in terms of songs. It not only takes a tremendous amount of time, but also money. So, the bottom line is: if it’s free the bottom will come out completely as far as quality goes. And, no, i don’t think it’s destined to be free. It’s intellectual property, and once it becomes generally understood by those who make music that there needs to be an avenue for compensation, artists will find ways to kinda keep there music out of “free land.” You’re already seeing it—look around and more and more artists post partial songs/videos instead of the whole thing. And physical product is evolving various forms of art and hand-made stuff, etc.

(Scott) I think people shouldn’t download anything that’s not for sale, period. Not like a buddy sending you an amazing mp3, but like you know, a big mass portal thing. It’s a totally new realm. It’s basic thievery and under-handedness. And not the cool robin hood type liberation of wealth from the evil giants in all cases. All an artist has is concept. Some of them are worth paying for. I mean if a guy makes a nice chair, shouldn’t we have to pay him if we like sitting in it over and over again? I buy digital music for some things, but i love objects more. I build shelves in order…I don’t believe I’ve ever flipped through a single pdf of liner notes. I love books! I love the cover, the binding…I love the soul of the object! I can almost feel all of it in my hands when I hold it. It gives home to the gravity of the music, a place to hang your adoration with some books and records. Viva la object!

Q: What do you think of the idea that music is destined for the “cloud”?

A: (Brendan) To me it sorta slowly is taking the beauty and mystery out of the experience. And I truly believe that eventually that will become clear to everyone who loves music. I know this: when I was growing up and first started to buy and collect music for myself, it was important for me to feel that I wasn’t just grabbing whatever blew my way—that I was instead carving out an identity with my music choices. Again, even now, you’re seeing a desire (from a small fraction, granted) for this kind of experience, even in this “everything free and now” cyber world. People will just simply make spaces to create and consume that are not part of the mainstream digital world. Music is rebellion and when this digital world truly becomes (if it’s not already) the “powers that be,” people of all ages will start to rebel against it.

(Scott) Can I get an amen…?

Q: How have your lives as musicians been affected—or not—by the existence of music blogs?

A: (Brendan) I like the music blogs, personally. I like the various and sundry voices. I don’t think it’s ever good when there are one or two sources of music criticism and everything is judged by that. I mean it’s crazy to think of one person’s opinion of a record sorta deciding for everyone whether it’s good or not. But, you never know, because even on the web there have become a few “voices” that have become arbiters of taste. It’s pretty zany!

(Scott) Yeah, I think it’s totally all kinda the same thing, meaning: good taste and refined desire will always get into the mix on a pretty high level. There are some super hip folks both turning people on to new junk, as well as providing a healthy and mutual agreeable platform for artist, writers, musicians, etc. to produce, promote, connect, etc. There’s always more junk, but that’s just basic math.

Q: One obvious thing the digital age has introduced is the ease of two-way communication between artist and fan. Does this feel like a benefit or a distraction, or a little of both?

A: (Brendan) Totally a benefit. You can really present yourself and your work the way you intend without any filtering or morphing by outside influences. It does take some extra time, but it can be truly meaningful and cool to have a running dialog with fans.

(Scott) It’s cool being in touch with folks. I mean, I don’t invite folks in on my writing process. People vote w/ their feet anyway. I and most people I know that do stuff are too busy to let junk like that distract anyhow. It has broken down a few bogus walls in the process between bands and fans but that’s a good thing. Plus, there’s always an off button.

Q: There is clearly way more music available for people to listen to these days than there ever used to be. How do you cope with the reality of an over-saturated market, to put it both economically and bluntly?

A: (Brendan) Yeah, that’s tricky. There’s just soooooo much stuff out there right now. And, as with mostly everything—mostly everything is average at best. I honestly find it hard myself to wade through it. And, you know, that’s another downside to the “cheap and easy.” When it’s cheap and easy, the result usually is crappy. But, you know, that’s the way it is right now. What kinda helps to separate it all is live music—you still have to be able to bring people together physically to advance as a band. And that really, over time, cuts a lot of the waste right outta there. Cream still does rise to the top; that hasn’t changed at all. The bands that people are excited about today are there for a reason—they’re better than most.

(Scott) And it’s not just other music. People, now more than ever, have way many more options as to where and what to do with their time and money. Hip blogs are one way to escape the chaff, but I agree with Bren: good songs, ideas, concepts, etc. will always exist and re-exist. But maybe with just a slightly smaller share of the market.

Fingertips Q&A: Jennifer O’Connor

Singer/songwriter Jennifer O’Connor answers five questions about the state of music in the digital age.

Jennifer O’Connor is something of a poster child for the idea of a 21st-century singer/songwriter. Down-to-earth and hands-on, she is both musician and record company operator, both a highly regarded artist and an all too easily disregarded player in the terminally over-populated world of independent troubadours. As such, she is the kind of person who pundits insist should be exploiting our social-media-fixated world to her own artistic benefit on the one hand, while on the other hand being the kind of person hard-pressed to make a working wage in an age of guilt-free free music.

Her song “Already Gone” was featured here last month; she also graced these pages back in 2005. Her fine new album, I Want What You Want, was released in November on her own label, Kiam Records—which is, we should note, an actual working record label with other artists on the roster. As such, she is in a particularly good position to be discussing the state of the industry here in the digital age.

Jennifer O'Connor

A: It does seem that we are moving more and more in that direction, doesn’t it? Where eventually all records (digitally anyway) will just be free. How do I cope with it? Well, I think you have to just embrace it because there’s no stopping it. I just released a record digitally and it’s available on iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, and Bandcamp with a pay what you wish, low-minimum deal. I don’t think you can stop people from sharing music (nor do I think you should try to). I’m also selling a limited-edition CD that is pretty personalized and I know that people who are really fans will seek that out. I know because I do that for the music that I really love. I think all of the music business these days is just a race to see who can adapt the quickest and also just keep in the game. I know a lot of people are up in arms about Spotify but I think it is a really great, smart tool. I use it to check out bands I’m not familiar with. If they are worth my money and it’s something I will want to listen to repeatedly, I will go out and buy their record, no question.

Q: What do you think of the idea that music is destined for the “cloud”?

A: The whole cloud thing is weird to me. Music is personal and I like to own my records. I guess the cloud is like a lending library which I suppose is cool as a supplement, but I don’t think it can replace the notion of having a music collection that you own. You say that music fans won’t “need” to own the music they like any longer—but I think that many (myself included), will still want to. At least I hope so.

Q: How has your life as a musician been affected—or not—by the existence of music blogs?

A: Commenters on blogs can be a real drag, but I try not to pay too much attention to that stuff anymore. I think there is room for both old-style music criticism and blog writing and there is certainly quality and its opposite in both.

Q: What are your thoughts about the album as a musical entity—does it still strike you as a legitimate means of expression? If listeners are cherry-picking and shuffling and so forth, how does that affect you as a musician, if at all?

A: It doesn’t affect me as a musician. I still make albums. The album as an art form is still relevant and important and necessary. To me. And I know there are other folks (though the number may be dwindling) who feel the same way. I give a lot of thought to song order, transition, flow, etc. That being said, I’m also a songwriter, with an emphasis on “the song”, so I’d like to think that the individual tracks can stand alone, or they have no business being on the record. So, either way, you win. 🙂

A: This is actually something I have thought a great deal about in the last few years. It can feel overwhelming. It’s hard to wade through all of the music as a listener and music fan for sure. And it is kind of rare that I hear something that really strikes me. As a musician and writer, I think what I’ve come to is that I can’t let that type of issue concern me. I just want to keep writing songs, doing what I do, getting better at it hopefully with each record. There is a ton of music out there yes, but there is not a ton of great music. I think great music will be recognized as such. Even if it isn’t in terms of money or tremendous record sales. The vast majority of musicians don’t really make money from record sales anyway—they make it from music licensing or touring. Of course there is a great deal of competition in those arenas as well. So depending on what part of my personality (musician, writer, or business person) is dominant on any given day—I guess that determines whether I’m thinking about it or ignoring it. It’s tricky and I would be the first to admit that I don’t have it all figured out.

Fingertips Q&A: Shelby Earl

Singer/songwriter Shelby Earl answers five questions about the state of music in the digital age.

Shelby Earl has just released her first album, but it’s been a long time coming. The Seattle-based singer/songwriter spent years—the entire ’00s, pretty much—working in music-industry day jobs while knowing deep down that she herself had music to write and sing.

And then, late in the year 2009, she quit her corporate job, found work as a waitress, and committed to making the album she was aching to make. The end result, Burn The Boats, got its name from something her stepfather said about her career change—that she had “pulled all the boats ashore and burned them” in full pursuit of her true path.

In the long process of coming out, as it were, as a musician, Earl has had a ringside seat to the crazy show the music industry has been putting on since the turn of the century. Now that she’s a recording artist herself, she understands the challenges of being a musician in the digital age all the more vividly.

Burn The Boats was officially released this week on Local 638 Records. The song “Under Evergreen” was featured here last month. You can listen to the whole thing (it’s very good), and buy it, on Bandcamp.

Shelby Earl

Q: Let’s cut to the chase: how do you as a musician cope with the apparent fact that not everybody seems to want to pay for digital music?

A: This is a timely question for me right now. Its one that’s been discussed by music industry folks for quite some time, but I’m only just now feeling the effects of it personally. Earlier this year I finished my self-funded album and did a “free download” promotion with a major music retailer. The numbers were staggering to me. Basically, for every six people who downloaded one of my songs for free, only one purchased a song. It was a great promotional tool in terms of visibility, but 6:1 free vs. purchased downloads certainly wasn’t the ratio I was hoping for (or expecting).

I was paranoid that the music itself was the problem, but I talked to my partners on the retail end of the promotion and they shared that these numbers were exactly in line with what they’re seeing every day. It confirmed for me that the “apparent fact that not everybody wants to pay for digital music” is an actual fact. People are consuming plenty of music these days, which is fantastic, but the sense that they don’t need to pay for it is terrifying to me as an artist. Why? Because making, recording, printing, promoting, and distributing music is expensive and it’s a full-time job. It is hard enough for professional, independent artists to reach a sustainable financial balance, but if our art no longer has a monetary value in the market place it will be next to impossible.

All of this said, I realize some artists believe quite the opposite to be true. They say: “give it away! It’ll reach more ears! All the money is in touring anyway!” But I disagree, not only because every opportunity to make my living is crucial to me (in order to continue the writing, recording, promoting, etc. referred to above), but also because I believe that what I do has value in the world. And everyone knows that when you pay for something, you value it more. At the end of the day, I don’t want to pour my heart and soul onto recordings that become just another free download in someone’s library of gazillions. I want my music to be worth something to people, just like a painting or a book that they keep and return to over time. Bottom line: I pay for things that are worth something to me and I’m quite sure they mean more to me for that very reason.

Q: What do you think of the idea of “music in the cloud”? How do you feel about the lack of direct ownership involved? (I might also ask how you feel about putting the act of listening to music at the whim of network coverage, and at the whim of companies which may or may succeed…but that’s probably leading the witness.)

A: I spent years at a desk job and did the bulk of my music listening online during the day. So I know, firsthand, how easy it is to just listen to what’s available to you for free (whether it be in the cloud or on music streaming/share sites) and then call it a day without ever buying any of the actual albums. Again, this scares me as an artist. Maybe it is just fear of the unknown about how this will all play out and how I will ultimately be compensated for my work if people start to pay only for music streaming subscriptions, I don’t know. But I don’t want to repeat myself here, so I digress.

I think these music consumption changes are just making everyone a little uneasy, like any major society-wide behavioral shift will do. From the consumer standpoint it is great to be able to share and access music so easily, but it can also be a bit unsettling to not have the same sense of ownership that comes with buying hard copies of CDs or LPs or even downloading MP3s to your computer hard drive. In many ways people are defined by the things they own and a little of that is lost when it’s all floating out in space. My personal music collection has all but maxed out my computer’s hard drive, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to move it to the cloud. I know it’s the next logical step, but it feels like letting go of the reigns a bit. And of course, to follow your lead, it does feel risky to put the music (and other files) you do purchase out into the cloud when none of us know what the fallout could ultimately be. What if one day I click over to the cloud and MY JAMS ARE GONE?!!! WHAT THEN???!!!

Q: How has your life as a musician been affected—or not—by the existence of music blogs?

A: I think all independent artists are affected, and helped, by the existence of music blogs. Personally, I found it a very affirming, encouraging experience to self-release my album, without a publicist or any kind of press-generating machine behind me, and to still get written about online. Music bloggers are the ones who’ve made me feel like there was momentum and positive energy behind my efforts. Sometimes, as an artist, that’s all you need to keep going, a sense of momentum. And thankfully, I haven’t had anyone bash me yet, though that is certainly a risk when individually run blogs are the ones setting the tone for so many listeners. I’m sure it’ll happen at some point because everyone knows “you can’t win ‘em all”, but it’s been all hearts and flowers thus far.

Honestly, the coolest thing about the blogger-musician relationship is that it’s reciprocal. Musicians need writers to let the world know they exist and blogs need readers. Nearly every time I’ve been written up this year, the blogger has asked me personally to post and promote the write-up. So I think that as long as bloggers and musicians maintain the attitude that we’re both trying to get good music to music lovers and we need to work together to do so, then the existence of music blogs will continue to be an incredibly positive thing for everyone.

Q: What are your thoughts about the album as a musical entity—does it still strike you as a legitimate means of expression?

A: I think the album can absolutely still be a legitimate means of expression for artists if they choose to put their energy into crafting a collection of songs that are meant to be heard in a particular order, but it doesn’t worry me that listeners can “cafeteria” their listening experience these days. I aim to write songs that stand alone, that exist in their own realms. If anything, it’s freeing to me that each tune can now be treated as an individual experience. It is of course possible that I only think this way because I find sequencing incredibly challenging. It’s the same for set lists with me. I have more than enough tunes to fill out an hour or two of music, but it’s the listener experience that I will lose sleep over.

Q: There is obviously way way more music available for people to listen to these days than there ever used to be. How do you as a musician cope with the reality of what surely seems to be an over-saturated market?

A: Honestly, I ignore the fact that there is so much music out there. It would be totally pointless and defeating for me to spend time and energy on the fact that the market is so over-saturated. Because at the end of the day, I’m only interested in reaching the listeners who want and need the music I’m making. And I regularly remind myself that I’m not in competition with anyone else. I’m not angling for anyone else’s piece of the pie—I’m simply making the music I have to make, for my sanity and for my soul, and I trust that it has its own place in the world.