There is a new article about “The Future of Music” everyday. Every once in a while something is written on the topic that seems to indicate a bench mark in the discussion, something with a little perspective. A recent ReadWriteWeb article has some of these qualities. The article specifically deals with the online aspect of the future of music and what types of services we may see more of.

[Picture from a section of the article titled "Legal Battles With Record Labels"]

A friend showed me this video a while back. It illustrates and provides a good example for something happening on a larger scale, something referred to as The Loudness War. And now a quote from the glorious wikipedia:

The phrase loudness war (or loudness race) refers to the music industry’s tendency to record, produce and broadcast music at progressively increasing levels of loudness each year to create a sound that stands out from others and the previous year.

Myplaylist is a service that compiles a playlist of available music and pictures on the internet. You type in a name of a band and then you can chose from one or more already created playlists of songs and images. A playlist will be automatically created for you on the spot if you are searching for something new. While you are listening to music, you can watch a slideshow of flickr images based on the search. I like the use of flickr images playing to music.

Myplaylist has a fairly basic function and that’s great. Beyond this function there is a little more fun to be had. I’ve discovered a lot of random awesome remixes by well known artists, stuff I didn’t know existed. The results of my search have been unexpected which has been a pleasant surprise.

Fun experiments

For those that like mashups: you can open up multiple myplaylist ’sessions’.

For those that are interested in the tagging phenomena: type in a random phrase or number and a playlist will be generated. I was just listening to a playlist of ‘untitled’ songs and it was pretty cool.

Just got back from the 25th Anniversary Chicago Blues Festival in Grant Park. My friend Randall and I stayed for most of the afternoon and saw a wide variety of entertainment. There was a great mixture of old and young people on stage, people who were connected to the music bloodline and people who weren’t, and full blown polished bands to stages that had only one dude with a guitar and a microphone.

So I suppose the festival is one of those ’something for everybody’ ordeals. I for sure got my something but given my terrible memory have already forgotten the name of the two guys that lulled me into a stupor for over an hour. Never mind their name at the moment, the important part was watching people staight up rocking. That was quite rejuvenating. These guys had me dancing like, what Randall refers to as, ‘the 40-year-old mother who is comfortable in her own skin and wants everybody to know it.’

I would like to see a new music that is 100% obscene. Yes I know, US Hip Hop does a pretty good job of that already, thank you. But US Hip Hop has tenderized these days. The majority of this music has taken to living within innuendo.

Clean versions were the versions that used to keep us alive long enough to be able to get to the store to get the explicit version. Now a lot of the songs on the radio are the same version as on CD. What used to be a procedure to be able to be played on public airways is now its own language. In there lies its appeal, the songs play by the rules but are at the same breaking every rule in the book.

But what if an explicit music never issued clean versions of its songs? Or, what if you couldn’t edit a song because the meaning rested in the lyrics? It would be a living disapproval of the common notion that ‘there is always a better word.’ This music would never be able to be played in Crate&Barrel. It would never be swallowed by MUSAK. Everybody would love it after work but couldn’t love it at work.

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