Littoral Records

In 2008 my wife, son and I spent three weeks living amongst a little Tibetan community in the Himalayan village of Tabo, in the Spiti Valley region of India. While there I was approached by a local guesthouse owner, Sonam Tsering, who was active in preserving the traditional and modern music of the Spiti region.

A few years previously, Sonam had ventured down through the high mountain passes with some musical instruments and with two of his friends, Phuntsok Baba and Yashe Phuntsok. They went to a town large enough to have some recording equipment and laid down some tracks — modern Spiti music celebrating some of the cultural and spiritual values of their community.

However, they didn’t have the money to get very many copies of their CD made, and by the time I arrived, Sonam only had one copy left. He was depressed about it because he didn’t know how he would be able to make more copies, and he was worried that the Spiti style of music was threatened with extinction.

Enter Littoral Records!

I made a copy of Sonam’s last CD on my MacBook and took notes while Sonam translated the lyrics and gave me enough background information for some liner notes.

Back in Sydney I created an album cover, an ISBN number and set the album up for sale on Bandcamp at http://thespitisound.bandcamp.com

Bandcamp is a great way to release music that might be of interest to a worldwide audience, but which is never likely to be a Top 20 blockbuster. Bandcamp costs nothing to set up, you get all the proceeds of each sale, and you get to set your own pricing. It takes very little time to set a page up, and Bandcamp scores well on Google searches.

I’ve spent no time marketing the Spiti Sound album but today I’m very happy to announce that Bandcamp has sold the first copy of the album online. Sonam, Phuntsok and Yashe will be receiving 100% of the proceeds and the money will go towards bringing musicians and artists together from all over the Spiti region to share, collaborate and record more Spiti music.

               

Click here to download:

spiti-songs-our-latest-release-has-that-crazy-himalayan-sound-yqFFnhFpuvgjhHABDxet.zip (19206 KB)

As the old saying (kinda) goes, “If you love something, set it free. If there’s enough advertising revenue to sustain it, it’ll love you back.” Billboard.com, the originator of the music industry behemoth which is the Hot 100 and Billboard 200 charts, has got-with-the-program and is now offering free access to its complete archive of charts, reports PaidContent.org.

Billboard is betting that its chart archives, free streaming/paid download music from Lala.com and ticketing integration with Ticketmaster will be a big enough draw to keep advertising revenue high. Personally, I doubt it.

First: you’ve got to be global to succeed and Billboard has ignored its substantial global audience and brand by signing up partner services that are geographically restricted to the US domestic marketplace.

Second: to leverage the power and the brand of the Billboard Hot 100 and extend them across the broader interweb, we need to see those rich data archives addressable through an API. Billboard has to get more open and more free, or I predict it will soon drop off its own charts.

If you’re like me, the problem is not finding money to buy great music, it’s finding great music in amongst all the chaff and crud shoved out there by the majors.

Radio? TV? With very few exceptions, forget about it — way too much noise-to-signal. Magazines? Maybe, if you can recall the name of the artist, album and track next time you’re buying music. Podcasts and blogs? Certainly, but that’s all a bit obvious, innit?

I have lots of other ways to find new music I’ll love, some of which I now realise is not commonly used by other music fans. So over the course of a few blog posts I’ll try to jot down some suggestions for great ways to find good music. Here’s a cracker: walk into a public library with your laptop and look for shared iTunes libraries:

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

See, these days, public libraries are full of cool people with laptops seeking a comfy chair, free wifi, a power outlet and sometimes if you’re really lucky, great coffee. The Wellington, NZ city public library where I’m writing this is great source for all of the above.

It’s an under-utilised feature many iTunes users don’t know about, but you can choose to share your iTunes music library with other users on your LAN, and you can also browse and play the shared libraries of other iTunes users.

Coworking spaces and large companies with flexible IT policies can also be good locations.

You can’t copy or rate the songs on someone’s shared iTunes library, but really, considering the relationship the music industry has to copyright law, it’s a small miracle they allowed Apple to even let us play each other’s music.

So here I am in Wellington and somebody’s sharing a library containing a big back catalogue of Kiwi native Dave Dobbyn’s music. Since discovering him on the soundtrack to the NZ film Footrot Flats years ago I’ve been meaning to get some more of his music. It’s great diverse, interesting and thoughtful music, with some similarities to Elvis Costello and Neil Finn and you could do worse than come away from your NZ visit with a few choice tracks of his, Bro, eh?

Littoral Records is your home of what we like to call the “Coastal” genre of music - something that has a relationship with the sea and the surf and the sun. In that vein, you should definitely check out a new Australian documentary about an enigmatic, controversial Australian surfing champion from the 1970s, “Searching for Michael Peterson”.

As a lad I was just old enough to know a little of his infamy though nothing about the circumstances behind his disappearance from professional surfing and the strange direction his life took.

This film answers those questions and it does so with an awesome soundtrack that’s available for online purchase in MP3 on Vitamin Records - you should definitely score that too.

Here’s the trailer for the film, including a little of the music and some great retro footage.

Searching for Michael Peterson Trailer from jolyon hoff on Vimeo.

Social music service Last.fm is my online radio station of choice. The Last.fm ‘scrobbler’ patiently notices all the music I play on iTunes and on my iPhone and makes recommendations I should listen to when I’m playing my Last.fm radio at my desk. If there’s stuff I’m listening to that I don’t own and want to buy, Last.fm makes it easy to buy a track or an album from iTunes Store. If the Last.fm recommendations aren’t exciting me today I can tune in to the tracks being played by people ‘like me’ on Last.fm.

So here’s a great idea: the best music of 2008 as scobbled by Last.fm users (well, minus the final few days of the year I guess.) Well worth a listen if you need to keep up with what Kids Are Listening To These Days.

The Last.fm Best of 2008 has introduced me to my new favourite band of the week: Glasvegas, who I’d describe as a mix of Futureheads and Teenage Fanclub with Phil Spector doing the mix.

But Santa's counting on me to upload music for all the little girls and boys who've been good and don't pirate music!

Arriving on stage in those early days with just a snare drum, acoustic guitar and double bass, they foreshadowed the acoustic roots movement that has become an essential element of contemporary music. 

Since those small beginnings they have grooved their way into the hearts and minds of discerning fans and critics, delivering five outstanding and timeless albums, the last of which, 2004’s Pacifico was released by Littoral Records (buy it here on iTunes Store).

Now Karma County have released a 2-disc retrospective collection, Headland. It’s  a must-have, with 36 tracks across 2 discs containing songs from all 5 albums, including 2000 ARIA winner Into The Land Of Promise. 

It also debuts previously unreleased tracks and live performances - remixed, revisited, remastered. Stand outs are the two new tracks; the new original The Feeling and a breezy cover of Yazoo’s Only You.

You owe it to yourself, you owe it to Australian music. Go check it out on the Vitamin store, where you can preview tracks and get your own copy the old-fashioned way - in the mail, on a couple of CDs. 

In this interview, Elvis Costello talks about his upcoming TV series, ‘Spectacle’, where he takes on the role of talkshow host, interviewing other great music artists and jamming with them.

Great boy/girl harmonies, some crunchy guitar, very clever lyrics and heaping spoonfuls of energy. This is 20 Minute Loop on their album ‘People Marry Famous People’ - my favourite new listening of the week. Check them out…

Lala’s CEO is Geoff Ralston, who used to head Yahoo!’s communications business. This being Lala’s third reincarnation, I wonder if the backers have just told Ralston to do what ever the majors want in order to licence a decent catalogue? Because this iteration feels like something major labels want more than something consumers want. Hence the geographical limit preventing users outside the US from using Lala. Not even Yahoo! Music has geographical restrictions on its streamed music.

Yes, there’s a difference in consumer benefit between per-track on demand similar music on demand, but not $0.10’s worth. We have to expect that a wide variety of music licensing models will be tested in this brave new world and only a fraction of them will make it. I’m betting this one won’t.