What, Yo La Tengo Worry?

I interviewed Ira Kaplan, Yo La Tengo‘s guitarist, for a story in the Forward and asked him about his opinion of digital media.

“There are always changes in business and you have to accommodate them,” he said. “I don’t spend much time worrying about it.”

Maybe that explains the band’s late arrival to MySpace.

But with Yo La Tengo’s new album, “I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass,” now in stores, he did acknowledge that his label, Matador, is “very concerned about it.”

In fact they’re so concerned about declining CD sales, they’ve invented incentives to get fans to pre-order the album on-line. These include unreleased tracks on MP3 (which Yo La Tengo reportedly had to go back to the studio to produce) and first dibs on concert tickets. They’ve dubbed it “the Season Pass.”

iTunes v. eMusic

With much ado being made about the iPod’s declining sales, Apple’s Steve Jobs is preparing to launch the next wave of the popular portable music/video/photograph device.

It better be good because, as an article in the Guardian observes, iTunes is facing a challenge from its most successful US competitor to date: eMusic. Today, perhaps trying to steal a little bit of attention from its larger rival, announced that it is launching in Europe.

This could mean a wider audience for independent labels and musicians since eMusic has taken the novel approach of avoiding the major labels.

The Pitchfork Effect

Large Hearted Boy, a culture blog, linked to this article about Pitchfork, the online music criticism site, in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

The site’s founder, Ryan Schreiber, discusses what Pitchfork’s success might mean for the major labels.

…Schreiber said he sees the site as an antidote to the “bloated” corporate music industry, whose album sales have decreased by almost 25 percent since 1999.

“The mainstream is shrinking,” he said. “People have more freedom than ever to watch or listen exclusively to what interests them personally, yet major labels are still shocked when their artists can’t sell 5 million records.”

I’d still be interested in knowing whether independent labels are suffering a similar decline or if their ability to cater to a specific audience has allowed them thrive in a changing media landscape.

The article also discussed the effect Pitchfork has had on the independent music scene.

Minneapolis band Tapes ‘N Tapes, for example, went from playing St. Paul’s ragtag Turf Club last winter to “The Late Show With David Letterman” this summer after it earned a rave from Pitchfork…

Tapes ‘N Tapes was not even a well-known name in its hometown when Pitchfork gave its album an 8.3-point rating out of 10 in February…

“It literally happened overnight,” said Tapes ‘N Tapes frontman Josh Grier.

By the time Grier’s band signed an international record deal and made its national TV debut in July, it had sold 12,000 copies of its self-released CD, mostly off the Internet.

“That Pitchfork review was definitely the single most important thing in getting us where we are now,” Grier said.

But all this is fairly old news. Pitchfork is just the latest music mag to become rock and roll taste-maker. From Rolling Stone to Spin to Alternative Press, every 10 to 20 years brings a changing of the guard. However, it is the first to do it in cyberspace.

The article’s most interesting point might be the claim that online sites are replacing cities as the focus of a “scene”:

Alongside websites such as MySpace, eMusic and YouTube, Pitchfork represents a growing shift from geographic music scenes to Internet music hubs.
“The next Seattle will probably exist in virtual space,” said Michael Azerrad, music editor at eMusic.com and a veteran rock critic.

But will it have to rely on the taste-makers at Pitchfork? If an independent act must bow down at the altar of Ryan Schreiber, how independent is it? And now taht Pitchfork has cemented a relationship with eMusic and moved into sponsoring festivals, the ugly spectre of conflict of interest raises its head:

Some critics also question whether Pitchfork crossed the line from booster to profiteer by producing Chicago’s Intonation Festival, which this year featured Tapes ‘N Tapes, Yo La Tengo and the Streets.

Quite a lineup for a recently undeard of band to be a part of. Clearly though, independent musicians have more options than ever when trying to get their music heard.