Albums On The Internet
I was going to call this post ‘Pitchfork + Lala’ but it occurred to me that it’s really about habits of music consumption and the different ways that we listen to music. Let me float this hypothesis. There are short-form listeners and there are long-form listeners. The short-form listeners got their fix from radio in the past. The long-form listeners got their fix from albums. Short-form listeners are interested in grazing. Long-form listeners are interested in immersion.
The beauty of the Internet is that it allows for both.
Now, there’s a meme that the record review is an old form and that the future is ‘the Digg of music’ like the Sixtyone. That people don’t really care to read an essay about music (it’s music after all, isn’t listening the point?) and that people just want a quick blurb and then an opportunity to get hip to the music through a listening experience, provided they know what’s popular (what the crowds like) and what’s good (what the tastemakers like).
I thought I was a stronger supporter of the ‘album reviews are dead’ meme until I started taking full advantage of the new Pitchfork integration with Lala. Because now you can stream the entire album in its entirety for free as you read the review and, for whatever reason, it’s a fundamentally different kind of experience and an immensely pleasurable one.
Over the last few days, I was finally able to listen to Beach House, a bunch of older Dirty Projectors records, the Wavves album, the Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, and the new Dinosaur Jr (well, not so new anymore). I did all of it through Pitchfork. And I did it the way I like to listen to music – immersion. So I listened to the entire record start to finish and really got to know the music in a way that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise. With Hype Machine or ‘Net skimming aggregator you’ll get a bunch of remixes, collaborations presented in a haphazard schizophrenic way. This was different.
I felt more connected to the artist in a way that an Internet radio service like Hype Machine or Pandora doesn’t seem to allow.
It still seems like Pitchfork is a funny little company because of all the things they seem to do willfully wrong or contrary to popular opinion. The reviews still seem a little long, the font is too small, there aren’t comments on the reviews.
But, for someone that is pretty interested in the art of making music and the statements that artists are trying to express, this is a pretty killer app.
