On Second Thought…

You know, you try and do something nice…

A few hours ago, I put up a review of the new Cold War Kids record, Loyalty To Loyalty. It was a glowing endorsement of one of the best records this year, with fond remembrances of seeing them live. I talked about a few tracks. I quoted some lyrics. And I streamed my favorite song on the album, Every Valley Is Not A Lake, to give a taste of the goodness to curious readers. 

The problem is, the record doesn’t come out for another week. Sure, it’s leaked all over the internet in the past couple days, but evidently, Downtown Records believes that Antiquiet’s enthusiastic endorsement is going to damage their marketing plan in a way that widespread downloading can’t- drop their numbers, skew their charts and graphs, flip the wrong switches. We received an urgent cease and desist email shortly after the piece went up:

IMMEDIATELY REMOVE ALL LINKS, REFERENCES, ARTWORK, DOWNLOADS, VIDEOS AND MP3 FILES ASSOCIATED WITH COLD WAR KIDS “LOYALTY TO LOYALTY”
NOTICE OF INFRINGEMENT AND DECLARATION
DOWNTOWN RECORDS

Now, I’m sure Dorothy Sherman, the author of the email with more caps than a Kanye blog rant, has good intentions. I’m sure everybody over at Downtown’s just doing their job, trying to milk one of their dwindling herd for all it’s worth with a die-cast marketing plan pulled right out of the fucking ’50s. But I’ve got a quick question: How many of you have any fucking idea who the Cold War Kids are? And of those, how many know there’s a new album coming out next week?

Downloading took a while to catch on with the masses, but look at the state of the industry now. CD sales are tanking, labels are fucked, and there’s, inarguably, a new school rising. Notice how I said ’school’ there, and not ‘order.’ Because there is no fucking order. It’s chaos. It’s pure goddamned insanity, and it perfectly suits the state of the world today. Selah.

Now we have options. Now we, the music loving consumers, have the power. These days, I haven’t heard of half the fucking bands my friends are into, and vice versa. And that’s awesome. 

Not only that, but the incredible wealth of music history we have access to is hardly conceivable. To be able to download the entire Beatles or Zeppelin or Mozart discography any time I want, rather than spending 10-12 dollars on each album, is an amazing opportunity. It’s a glorious way to fill in the inevitably massive gaps in music history knowledge that we all have. The Beatles have what, 13, 14 albums recorded? And that’s not even counting singles and remasters and past masters and plaster cast blasters and whatever else. When you’re looking at spending hundreds of dollars for a music aficionado to be able to study an artist’s complete works, the conversation becomes ludicrous. It turns to the kind of shit that kills growth and creativity: it becomes about hoarding. Superiority through possession.

Fuck that shit.

We’re in a time now where kids, children are able to amass a depth of musical knowledge that was never possible before. My daughter listens to everything from Pearl Jam to Son House to Rachmaninov to The Who, because that’s what’s playing in the house. Because that’s what Daddy downloaded off the computer. There’s an entirely different world of music out there aimed at her right now- glittery, vapid horseshit that has no artistic merit and teaches our children to be Barbie dolls and have a thorough awareness of names like Heidi Montag and Miley Cyrus. It’s fucking cotton candy for the soul. A kid whose basis for musical taste comes from fucking High School Musical is certainly going to have a different outlook than a kid who came up on The Beatles and Massive Attack. But that’s for another conversation.   

What it comes down to is that things are very fucking different now, and the Cold War Kids are not immune to the tidal shift. Where is their big promotion scheme? Where’s the big curtain we’re pulling back? 

We now have viral online marketing campaigns pushing boundaries and opening doors to options of exposure we’ve barely begun to conceive of. Trent Reznor’s the Neil Armstrong of the blurred line between artist and promoter, and anyone with a breath of argument needs only look at this to grasp the extent of their naïvete. Companies like 42 Entertainment are emerging as the new and vastly improved record sleeve for artists- a new way to further their art without being confined to a few short label-approved liner notes or a video providing a badly limited, two-dimensional chunk that costs way more than you’re going to make off its exposure, which is more than likely going to be nil.

It gives the artist a whole new toolbox for developing a relationship with the audience. Trent must have been fucking ecstatic, watching the entire project unfold. It was a beautiful execution. Sure, you can’t tuck something like that into a pretty box to put on display in your house, but it’s going to be just as memorable and rewarding of an experience.

Did Downtown do anything like that for Loyalty? Did I miss something along the way? Because aside from a couple little blog blurbs, I haven’t seen shit. That’s not exactly a way to get the word out. And shitting on your fans is definitely not the way.

The old model is fucking dead, and the evidence is in the thousands upon thousands of music shop owners facing inevitable extinction. They are the unfortunate casualties in the industry’s reluctant purging of bloated expense accounts and tail-chasing bullshit resistance to emerging technologies.

Information, specifically ad-based information, is overwhelming us all. Right now, as I sit here and type this, I’m trying to focus on the distant chirp of an alarm clock in another part of the building just to keep my mind off the 7 trillion other things scuttling through my mind like black widow spiders on a pane of glass. The shit is deafening. I’ve developed some fucked up kind of exposure-based ADD, which is both an aneursym in waiting and a blessing, being that I feed my kid by writing about the world. I need to know what the fuck is happening out there. Information overload is part of the job. 

What we’re doing with Antiquiet isn’t focused on bashing one base set of ideals into people’s heads, but rather to sift through the tide of bullshit to find something that excites us, so we can share it with our readers. We want to get people excited as we are about the things we’re into. We talk about the shit that inspires us, what makes us want to pick up our guitars or brushes or notebooks. There’s real passion to be found out there. Yeah, we’ve got some gripes to air, but the focus is mainly positive.

And that’s what the intention was with the Loyalty To Loyalty review. I had nothing but good things to say, and to be honest, as a fan I felt a certain obligation to get the word out there- because I’ve seen nothing anywhere about the album. I’m not talking street teams, either. That shit is dead and gone. Parallel to the advancement of technology, everyone’s bullshit detectors have evolved at a neck-snapping rate. We’ve been forced to adapt to keep from falling prey to the marketing machine. We know ad links from real ones, we know a product pitch from a recommendation piece or selfless, inspired endorsement, and anyone within a stone’s throw of the slipstream of current events in the world of music can understand the difference between a street-team hype push for a bullshit album and genuine excitement over a quality product. And make no mistake- advertisers are working their asses off every day to fix that “problem.”  

We aren’t limited to one method of consumption anymore- who the hell hears a great song on the radio and heads out to Sam Goody for the CD these days? Collectors. Grandparents who don’t have computers. Out of touch parents who don’t know how to communicate with and learn from their kids. What are you waiting for, guys, the single to catch fire on the radio?

The blind buy driven off one radio single is utterly dead.

I wonder how many kids get caught stealing from record stores these days, versus 15 years ago.

You don’t need to leave your house to steal music anymore. That’s why record stores are failing. 

You have your sample-and-buy formats, making things easy and legitimate for music lovers: Amazon. iTunes. Rhapsody, etc. 

But for every one of those, there are fifty Megaupload / Rapidshare / Yousendit links to download those albums for free. Trying to fight that is like declaring war on the ocean. 

Forget your market research. It’s outdated before the ink is dry. Tap into your fan base. Listen to them. Embrace the hype.

Update: Cold War Kids’ singer Nathan Willett was kind enough to shoot us an email a couple days after this went up, clarifying the band’s position without theatrics or falsehood. It’s great to know that, for all the bullshit label antics and PR runarounds, there are still some bands out there that aren’t above setting the record straight on their own.

Here’s the email:

Hi there, my name is Nathan Willett and I am in the band Cold War Kids. I try not to do too much internet reading on our band, partly because I am not aware of the best sites to go to and party because it can be tough to have to process so much criticism, both negative and positive. The line that an artist walks between knowing everything going on with your band commercially vs. just doing your best to be a good artist is always a tough one…

A friend of mine read your review of loyalty to loyalty and what came next in the- ‘on second thought,’ and I was concerned, so I wanted to write a quick note. The truth is that I don’t know as much as I should about what is productive and ethical for bands like us on the internet. Why Downtown hires a company to shut down blogs for offering the music that promotes us is new territory for us, and I can only tell you that I too am concerned now and will learn more. I know that it is counter-intuitive for you guys to support us and get a letter that says don’t play our music. I don’t understand the logic and business behind that. But I appreciate your ideas about the value of having access to libraries of music and what a difference that makes in our exposure and education.

So I hope that my apology doesn’t sound like a naive cop-out; we strive to do our best to treat people well and we appreciate your support. We will do better to know why this was done.

Thanks again,
Nathan