concerts and machine learning and what even is an "album"?
Hi! I hope your August wasn't too tense - I mean, I know it was, but we're all still here.
This Is Not What You Had Planned
When things re-opened back a couple of months ago, I was excited to buy tickets to shows - partially to be able to support venues and artists again, but mostly out of optimism. I knew in June or July that we didn't have the virus situation completely beat, but it was fun to imagine going to a show in September, with case numbers low and vaccination levels high.
Those tickets are turning into shows, and those shows have been somewhat tense. The mood two months ago was that it might work out - and venues and artists needed to get back to work. But now, artists and venues are at odds about masks, vaccines, and negative tests. Some acts have cancelled their tours - I just found out about a show that got moved back a year, three weeks before it was supposed to happen. Things are developing quickly, but I'm not sad to see these cancelled, delayed, or moved outdoors.
It's clear that vaccination alone won't be the end-all solution I'd been imagining - anyone doing anything indoors has to do more. It doesn't feel safe, because the data is telling us it's not safe. And I just wish it was different. I'm not buying tickets to anything that's getting announced, but less and less is getting announced. (First Avenue had no presales to announce this week.)
Waiting for Donda
Kanye West had three "launch events" over five weeks to beta-test a record ("DONDA") in front of stadium crowds. The most recent was Thursday, and the (finished?) album finally dropped Sunday morning.
Nobody has asked - and based on a quick poll of my readers, you are not very interested in Kanye West - but here are some of my thoughts on what this might mean.
Billboard has estimated that $4 million was collected over the course of the three nights. (Other sources say that, if it were a tour, it'd be the highest grossing tour that toured last month.) All this for music that wasn't performed, off an album that wasn't done and you couldn't buy. In an era where record sales don't amount to much, and streaming nets pennies or less, this doesn't seem like a bad revenue stream in an industry that's dying to find them.
West changed the album significantly over the course of five weeks - making final decisions about the content and structure of the record based on how it sounded on stadium speakers, and from the feedback of the crowd.
The listening events were uncensored - but since he started his disciplined Christian phase (starting with 2019's "Jesus Is King"), he hasn't allowed any "language" in anything he releases. (That used to be his rule, anyway.) Fans are pleading on social media for the explicit version of this record, and I don't think they're going to get it.
Since those events were live-streamed in very high quality, unofficial recordings of each "party" (with song titles, listed collaborators, and "album artwork") are easily found online. In a sense, Kanye didn't have to release the album - a staggering number of people already had three "demo" versions of it before Sunday.
If Kanye used the crowds to help make decisions, he maybe could have used more help. The album is 109 minutes long - with some songs appearing twice during the runtime, in two different forms. (Without those extra versions, it's still 84 minutes, which would have been a 2CD set in the CD era.)
The second in each of these cases is indicated as "pt 2", but they seem to be the same song with different guest verses. That effectively allows fans to make their own final cuts of the record, inviting them to choose whether they prefer the version of "Jail" with Jay-Z or the "pt 2" with DaBaby. Without streaming and playlists, this wouldn't be possible. (And if Kanye had just been bold and made the cuts himself, it wouldn't be necessary.)
Kanye never said anything at these events, meaning that every outfit, gesture, delay, and guest appearance was read for clues. It was never clear exactly when the record would be released, as nobody from the artist's camp could provide an official date. (Upon its release, Kanye broke his silence on Instagram to complain that the release hadn't been "approved" by him, but he hasn't said anything else.)
While many (including me!) found this whole exercise to be more exhausting than entertaining, having a month of mystery and speculation appears to have worked to achieve respectable sales and streaming numbers. It's setting insane records for streaming over a surprising geography, and sales have been strong.
Perhaps it was all part of the plan - an artistic statement that felt unfamiliar because it was unprecedented. Or maybe it was one of the world's biggest stars making it up as he went along, wearing out the patience of his fans as he struggled to simply complete the work.
The record is a frustrating mess, and it's great in spots. The record still doesn't seem finished to me, but a lot of it evokes the more challenging, complex, and rewarding moments in the Kanye catalog. The guests (for the most part) bring an intensity and urgency that's missing in hip-hop right now. But the slow spots drift well into self-parody, and, worse, boredom. He doesn't seem like he can possibly be enjoying himself, and I'm not sure there's a lot left to say about the two or three themes he seems to have settled on.
Machine Learning Comes to Playlists
Plex has released some new functionality that scans and analyzes your music (from your hard drive - not streaming) with a machine learning library to better categorize and match it.
Plex is very nice home theater software, but I've never been too motivated to try their music library feature. Since we got access to Spotify 10 years ago, I've neglected my personal MP3 library. I haven't seriously used iTunes since it was called iTunes, and Apple's replacement for it is something of a step backwards. So if I can unlock some of the gems living in that old pile of files, I'll give it a shot.
In theory, Plex is finding musical neighbors based on the musical characteristics present in the file. Like any recommendation engine that suggests "intelligent" connections, it's hit and miss.
I suspect that Plex is using the same library as Pacemaker does or did - and I say that because "matches" are represented with a percentage, which is a weird way to talk about musical similarities. (Here I think Plex is sniffing out a tight 1990 production sound - the drums between Pixies's "Dig For Fire" and Big Country's "In a Big Country" are pretty similar, and nobody's shocked to see The Smiths or XTC on this list. Journey's song from TRON is a little bit of a surprise, but I listened to it and it's got the right sound.)
But I laughed when it said that this brilliant and sad Elvis Costello song is a match for Kermit the Frog's "Bein' Green". It is very much a match.
The Calendar
Waxahatchee, 9/12, in the First Avenue mainroom. We'll see! (That's the same day as the MTV Video Music Awards, which I may watch for you and report on next month.)
Blockhead is at the Entry on 9/2 - I like his dramatic hip-hop compositions, but the Entry is small, and I don't know how that will work, and I have to drop another kid off at college the next day.
Bonnaroo is also this upcoming weekend - I cannot tell if they plan to stream it or not. (They generally do?)
Andrew WK got moved to 2022.