[FRIAM] Steaming services

Sun Aug 22 15:41:52 EDT 2021

He *hates* Alexa, Amazon, and especially Amazon Music.

What is there to hate?  They just play music you request.

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sun, Aug 22, 2021, 12:47 PM Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:

> On 8/22/21 8:28 AM, ⛧ glen wrote:
>
> It does both, perhaps counterintuitively. I'd argue it facilitates traffic between demes/cliques, but inhibits the content of demes/cliques.
>
>
> I am a sucker for local AM radio when traveling... to put my finger on the
> pulse of the locals, as it were.  What music they listen to, what their
> news-of-choice leans toward, and what they are buying/selling/trading with
> one another.  "If you can hear this station, what you hear *might* be
> relevant to you *right now*"
>
> When internet radio stations started popping up (KTAO in Taos being an
> early adopter), I found myself sampling these local stations around the
> world... one in particular being in Australia (forget the call sign/town)
> and having a strong familiarity to the myriad country AND western stations
> up and down the rockies and out into the plains of the US West, but with an
> Aussie accented DJ of course.    Unfortunately it didn't replicate the
> experience because I was patently NOT there... I could NOT plan a detour to
> catch the local farmer's market or check out a local joint (where there
> burgers would have pineapple and plum sauce instead of pickles and
> ketchup)...   But what I was most struck by was that they were playing 95%
> American Mainstream (C&W) music and referencing OUR icons of music
> deeply/exclusively.   Only occasionally would I catch a "local" artist
> (Australeonesia?)  I felt simultaneously expanded and constrained.
>
> When I moved to a small city/big town on the border (DouglasAZ/Agua Prieta
> SA) our first neighbors were a Mexican American family who were one of the
> local bands that played every venue, mostly rock but with their own
> ranchera stylization often.   They would sit around evenings playing a wide
> range of music, including the father, a sister and a younger brother (maybe
> 5? too young to participate in the public events).   We moved away from
> that house within 6 months but I continued to hear them the whole 8 years I
> lived in that town, they probably played at both of my proms and any other
> public musical event I might have attended.   What never crossed my mind
> (until now) was that for the 4 years I was a Disc Jockey, I never heard
> them play on air, nor was I motivated/inclined to seek them out.  Why not?
> Linda Ronstadt (100 miles away) was hitting it big from similar roots, why
> not them?   I guess because they weren't on the Billboard Top 100 charts
> they sent us every month, telling us what was hot and what was not?  They
> had no route to get known beyond the local bars and public venues.
>
> Both of my daughters partnered with aspiring musicians as they came of
> age.  There have been several bands involved and those partners even
> occasionally found time to make music together (though never recorded
> together).   These bands never made it beyond local recognition...   "Billy
> and the Belmonts", "Oktober People", "Weapons of Mass Destruction" all come
> to mind.   And yet one of them was going on a self-promoted tour of the
> west when we were in Berkeley, CA for a year and in fact, totally by
> coincidence, had gotten booked at an Irish Pub ("Starry Plough") just a
> short walk from our apartment (actually probably the closest watering hole
> to our apartment).   It was just off Telegraph, right on the Oakland border
> (as was our back fence)...  in what other world (pre/sans Internet) could a
> band like that find a pub like that?   While Terry (daughter's now husband)
> had the resources (as a Technical College instructor) to own a van, mix
> their own music on Garage Band, cut their own CDs and print their own
> T-shirts (aka Merch)...  They would have been sleeping in his van the whole
> way (instead of being gifted couch-stays by their nascent mySpace fan base)
> and would have had to make a LOT of phone calls and snail-mail inquiries to
> secure the venues they were able to do online through the digital social
> networks circa 2005.   Their music was out there for sampling on MySpace
> and while all that (the bands as well as MySpace) are all defunct and
> rotting away in digital history, it made it a lot further than I think it
> could have in the days of vinyl or cassette tape.   I do still have CDs of
> their music and it is ripped to my hard drive as well... but can't find any
> of it to speak of online 8 years after dissolution.  My t-shirts are all
> rags now, they were made on budget blanks I'm sure.
>
> Terry (of WMD/Belmont fame) is now the bass player for Queen Chief in
> Portland OR.  Their preferred streaming platform seems to be bandcamp.com
> which seems to be *trying* to provide a direct route from artist to
> audience, but unspurprisingly Alexa doesn't support Bandcamp and while they
> also stream on Spotify, my understanding of that service is that they won't
> see any significant income from that stream.   I don't believe any of the
> band members depends on the band for a significant source of income, Terry
> certainly doesn't, though it may support his recording/instrument
> collecting habits somewhat.
>
> They just released a couple of singles this year.  A stoner rock rendition
> of Hank William's classic "Kaw-Liga
> <https://open.spotify.com/album/2U88jwoi9ZKRHjTgG1YIDu>" and their own In
> my Eyes <https://open.spotify.com/album/1oaVT5IS8jIm6xpJ2RlH2o>.
>
> Spotify refers me right away to bands (I presume equally struggling/indie)
> like King Black Acid, Royal Fuz, RZRS, and Hurriah.    While I like QC's
> lyrics and musical "style" it is all too high energy for my old ears/soul,
> so I tend to listen to a new track or album a few times when it comes out,
> but don't have it ripped to my car sound system nor pull it up regularly
> (though In my Eyes is thumping/chanting away in the background as I type
> this)...
>
> Mary's son (who edits bills for the TX legislature by day) is also a
> drummer in an indie band in Austin and they eschew streaming in favor of
> the (semi) classic medium of CDs and live-shows.   They gently dissolved
> last year after a 10 year run...  the quarterly live-shows in various
> dive-bars were what was keeping them going (emotionally/creatively?)...
> and they also have all hit middle age.
>
> Digital/Online/Streaming has definitely changed the fitness landscape for
> aspiring independent artists and for music buffs.  Mary's son is a total
> movie/music buff and shares his listening time between classic vinyl and
> the flood of new music coming to him over his own social networks from
> friends of friends of friends who are independent singer-songwriters/bands.
>
> I like Glen's gesture toward analyzing this in terms of network/graph
> models...  I think the data is out there for anyone to gather/study up to a
> point.   Josh's (Mary's son) collection of vinyl and hand-cut CDs probably
> is hidden for the most part from any database, though he *might* not be
> astute enough to turn off Google/Android's "what music is playing right
> now" service... maybe what he listens to is being analyzed on some Google
> Brat's Friday Project right now?   He *hates* Alexa, Amazon, and especially
> Amazon Music.
>
> It's a wild new world, even though everything feels pretty much the same
> (only different).
>
> - Steve
>
>
>
>
> On August 22, 2021 6:51:02 AM PDT, Jochen Fromm <jofr at cas-group.net> <jofr at cas-group.net> wrote:
>
> In the last virtual FRIAM meeting Jonathan Zingale mentioned that streaming services confine our access to music, because they mainly offer mainstream music.IMHO they also broaden our access to music: as a European I can listen to music from all around the world. I have for example German, Italian, Australian, British, American and Spanish playlists on Spotify. This weak I have listened for instance to a Spanish songhttps://open.spotify.com/track/1MdsletWuIR9ItEnitWRwp?si=yZPJfu01R_6RAmw9ang8mQDo you feel streaming services restrict our access to music or do they extend it? :-/-J.
>
> - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
> un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20210822/4b60a774/attachment.html>