Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Retro Music Moment
Madscribe:
Just when I think my fascination with YouTube is about to wane, there's always something that I come across as a music fan that just makes me take notice. Prepare to throw out your copies of "Ebony and Ivory" (if you're not still using them as coasters) and listen up to a more truthful (and soulful pairing) of Stevie Wonder with a major "mainstream" artist.
Watching this, I was reminded of the documentary Baseball which I caught a glimpse of this past weekend on my local PBS station. I had to chuckle as the narrator told the story of how Major League team owners were scared to death that radio broadcasting of America's national pastime in the 1920s and '30s would kill stadium ticket sales. Instead of killing ticket sales, the broadcasts widened baseball's popularity bringing out MORE fans to stadiums. Tickets sales went wild, as women and whole families enjoyed a stadium outing, not just young, single men. Reminds me a lot of the present music and media industry and its inability to deal with music distribution of its vast (and often unreleased) catalogue, sales, and 21st century technology.
What the hell is wrong with record and media companies when they are sitting on material like this and refuse to make it available commercially, especially in a digital age when the cost to market is so minuscule? Then they get indignant when some person pulls a video like this from their private stash and makes it available on YouTube to a yokel like me. Yes, music industry, there are people who are actually fans of both Stevie Wonder AND Glen Campbell and would have payed a couple of bucks on I-Tunes for this! (Having been born an hour away from Clarksville, the subject of the one of the Monkee's first singles, this brother feels a connection to the Wichita Lineman who played guitar on many of their records)
With that in mind, I hope RT Regular (and Dylan fanatic) Rodak enjoys the cover!
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Just when I think my fascination with YouTube is about to wane, there's always something that I come across as a music fan that just makes me take notice. Prepare to throw out your copies of "Ebony and Ivory" (if you're not still using them as coasters) and listen up to a more truthful (and soulful pairing) of Stevie Wonder with a major "mainstream" artist.
Watching this, I was reminded of the documentary Baseball which I caught a glimpse of this past weekend on my local PBS station. I had to chuckle as the narrator told the story of how Major League team owners were scared to death that radio broadcasting of America's national pastime in the 1920s and '30s would kill stadium ticket sales. Instead of killing ticket sales, the broadcasts widened baseball's popularity bringing out MORE fans to stadiums. Tickets sales went wild, as women and whole families enjoyed a stadium outing, not just young, single men. Reminds me a lot of the present music and media industry and its inability to deal with music distribution of its vast (and often unreleased) catalogue, sales, and 21st century technology.
What the hell is wrong with record and media companies when they are sitting on material like this and refuse to make it available commercially, especially in a digital age when the cost to market is so minuscule? Then they get indignant when some person pulls a video like this from their private stash and makes it available on YouTube to a yokel like me. Yes, music industry, there are people who are actually fans of both Stevie Wonder AND Glen Campbell and would have payed a couple of bucks on I-Tunes for this! (Having been born an hour away from Clarksville, the subject of the one of the Monkee's first singles, this brother feels a connection to the Wichita Lineman who played guitar on many of their records)
With that in mind, I hope RT Regular (and Dylan fanatic) Rodak enjoys the cover!
Labels: Glen Campbell, Music Industry, Stevie Wonder, YouTube
