A Tropic Morning Warning
The National released a new single today with perfect execution. It was still a clusterfuck; a symbol of an industry unapologetically eating itself by chasing streams instead of listeners.
Let’s get one thing out of the way first: I love the National. I have since 2002 or so when I saw them at the Mercury Lounge in the spring. I was in London when R.E.M. asked them to open on the 2008 tour, was there for that tour, and probably seen them as much as I have Patti Smith or The Decemberists, which is to say a lot.
I love their ability to dose you with depression so profound you long for cheap whiskey in a back booth at a dim basement venue with sticky floors. Alone. At 4AM.
But this. How do I explain this:
I know exactly what this is. It’s a symbol of a broken industry. An industry right now so resigned to some inevitable fate of commodification of access and monetization that the company that hosts this abomination of “democratization” thinks that link-in-bio is the solve for this fragmentation. And it’s not their fault.
This is not a solution. It’s the symbol and symptom of a deep rooted problem. An illness in fact.
Today, the National launched their new single, announced their tour, and updated everything from their merchandise to their website. New record announce days are stressful: its essentially a day and date rebranding of a company, all the while trying to manage embargoes (easier to control) and the weirdness that is “indexing” on the DSP’s (much harder).
The team at 4AD/Beggars and the National home office did a great job at it, all told. I could mentally picture the “digital” person checking off items on the todo , for I was that person not too long ago. At 9AM PST today, everything went live. Or, so was planned.
Apple indexed early and the track beat embargo. The album art leaked earlier this week, as did the track-listing from a habitual leaker on Reddit. That leaked art had a watermark on it, and for 48 hours, that was the cover art all over online channels, not the actual one. Tour dates started showing up on various platforms early as well as those systems updated at different times and fed things like Bandsintown and Facebook Events.
On Reddit, threads popped up in /r/thenational, and then they did as well on Facebook in the fan group there. At 9AM, everything lurched into gear with the website changing, then the Feature.fm page (above) slowly gaining links. Spotify was not live until after 9AM, over 30 minutes after Apple was.
As the press embargo was lifted, some outlets had quotes that others didn’t. Rough Trade had a quote about the Taylor Swift collab that the band’s own website didn’t.
I’d say by 11AM PST, the world reached equilibrium and the fan club had sent out the pre-sale dates for the tour, the websites were updated, the pre-orders live, ticketing websites updated, and the cluster-fuck of the Feature.fm link-in-bio interstitial was complete.
Let’s regroup then: none of this is great.
Take the DSP’s: they are black holes of engagement. I know they are necessary, but Apple, Spotify and Amazon know more about who’s listening to the music than they pass on to the artists or their teams. The artist tools are kind of crap, and even with creepy animated artwork, listening on Apple or Spotify is like listening to an Excel spreadsheet.
The band themselves has pre-orders up for vinyl, with no instant-grat download or anything special to go along with it. Same with 4AD. BandCamp does. Now owned by a gaming company.
Meanwhile, the communal activity from all of us sad mom/dad fans of the band are strewn all over the Internet, reposting reposts of reposts of lyric fragments and quotes because the band ceded that duty to Reddit and Facebook. We’re not even at the tour on-sale yet.
The sad part about all of this: it was executed perfectly.
It’s not the band’s fault that it was a mess, it’s the fact that the music business is so intent on chasing every last stream, every last method of monetization they forget that people actually should listen to music. Enjoy it. Live it.
People aren’t streams. They are fans. People listen. They feel the air move.
The quickest way to commodifying art is to treat it with the sanctity of a barcode. If “link in bio” is the last stop on the disruption line for the music industry, we’re all fucked.
