Important news stories (3)

Rock of Ages

by Jeff Leeds

New York Times, November 26, 2006

The AARP is going into the music business. As this news story says, the AARP is sponsoring Tony Bennett's current tour. And not only that:

Elton John performed at the association's "Life @50+" convention in Anaheim, Calif., last month; officials said they have booked Rod Stewart and Earth, Wind & Fire for next year. James Taylor played two years ago, and the group's magazine has named him as one of the hottest people over 50...

[The group is also] bulking up its Web site with music offerings, licensing the Pandora online radio and recommendation service [see below], and negotiating for shelf space at a major retail chain, which would carry exclusive versions of certain CDs with discounts to AARP members. And of course it will advertise at Mr. Bennett's concerts and perhaps sign up new members there too.

Why all this? Because people 45 and over have been the record industry's biggest market ever since the late 1990s:

Last year fans 45 and older accounted for 25.5 percent of sales, while older teenagers (a group more prone to music piracy) represented less than 12 percent. So it's little wonder that Rod Stewart's raspy remakes of pop standards emerged as a franchise, or that Bob Dylan in September captured the No. 1 spot on the Billboard chart for the first time in 30 years.

The AARP wants to take advantage of all this, using music to attract new members.

And the meaning of it all for classical music? There's a wistful belief that people, as they age, will want something musically more serious, and so will turn away from pop, and embrace the classics.

But this news story suggests otherwise. Older people still like pop. Which isn't to say that some of them won't embrace classical music, but surely not as many of them will as happened in the past. So the classical audience -- if we don't do something -- will very likely shrink.

Two footnotes: We shouldn't forget that anybody looking for serious music can already find it outside the classical world. Someone who grew up with Aerosmith can start listening to world music, jazz, or blues.

And Pandora! I'm hardly the first to discover it, but if you haven't tried it, go to the site and see what you think. It's an Internet radio service, which offers to learn what you like, and give you more music like it. You enter the name of a song or an artist (so far this only works with pop; classical music, the Pandora people say, is something they're working on). Then, based on what they plausibly claim are 200 or more musical characteristics, they start playing songs they think are like the music you entered. If you like a song that comes up, you can tell them so, and they'll play more like it. If you don't like something, you tell them that, too, and immediately the song vanishes. Things like it won't be played in the future.

And this works! I started with a "radio station" (you can create up to 100 of them) based on Feist, a Canadian singer-songwriter I like. Later that day, someone I know said that her taste in pop was terrible: She liked things (like Abba, whom she'd loved in high school), and didn't listen to anything she thought she ought to like. So I wondered what would happen if I created a Pandora station to address that. I told them to start playing Abba and Bob Dylan. Three or four songs down the line, they started playing Led Zeppelin, and I was amazed. Some Zep songs really might be some kind of crazed mix of Abba and Dylan -- and I'd never have thought of that myself.

I kept broadening the station. (My problem, I fear, is that I kept rejecting the Abba songs.) I added the the Ronettes, and started getting other girl group songs. I added the Pet Shop Boys, and started getting more dark dance-pop. But I also found I was getting some rock songs with a vivid dance-like rhythm, things I'd never have found on my own. Pandora works. Though now I think I'm getting too much dance, so I think I'll add Neil Young and Public Enemy and P. J. Harvey...

December 11, 2006 10:29 AM | | Comments (1)

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1 Comments

Boy, this brings up some scary thoughts. So do you think in 20-30 years that the "Muzak" piped into nursing homes will include the Stones in the playlist? I guess I could live with that (Oh God, please, no Beatles!)
Of course "Satisfaction" will take on all new, and unintended, meanings for folks who have a hard time taking a decent crap. (And in 40=50 years wil "Smells Like Teen Spirit" be part of the "muzak" playlist) Maybe Devo's cover of "Satisfaction" (which, btw I love) would be more appropriate ;)

For the Boomer/Echo Boomer crowd, of which I'm a not-so-proud member (Bush II was born during the first wave of the boom), even though the Sex may become less and less frequent, the Drugs are for different purposes, there's still Rock 'n Roll. If they can't have an adolescent body anymore,and this is not due to a lack of effort on their part, they sure as hell will maintain the mind of one! I have to say that your idea that some of them will turn to jazz is overly optimistic (No Kenny G. is NOT a jazz musician, let alone the Wyndham Hill gang). Maybe you're not aware that many, if not all, of the problems bedevilling classical music are also happening in jazz. Over 30 years ago St. Miles made a valiant, if sometimes flawed and ultimately failed, effort to make jazz "relevant" to kids. And great jazz is made in places where you can drink, (used to) smoke, dance, walk around and, (shudder, this REALLY pissed Mingus off, and I can't blame him) talk. Even with jazz in "classy" concert venues there is less stodgy concert decorum than classical concerts. Only moronic barbarians don't make audible sounds of appreciation after a great solo. With regards to world music, I don't think you mean Balinese gamelan or the work of the great sarod master Ali Akbar Khan. What I think you mean is third world rock with a little curry or hoisin sauce on the side: the end result of american musical hegemony. They may hate us, but they absolutely love our "culture". Here in "flyover" land, radio listener polls show that many boomers are turning to "new" country, which is in reality "old" rock. What is "line dancing" but moshing for folks with bad knees and backs?

And music isn't the only field that is facing a crisis; similar things are happening in the other arts/arts institutions and has spread to political and religous institutions and realm business. We're in deep shit: we've become a nation of Peter Pans. "Schools Out For Summer", the kids have taken over

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Resources

Age of the Audience 
Conventional wisdom: the classical music audience has always been the age it is now. Reality: It used to be younger -- dramatically younger, in fact. Here's some evidence -- actual texts of old studies, links to NEA studies -- plus my blog posts on this subject. more

earlier resources

Things I like

Frank O'Hara... 
...or rather these lines from one of his poems, quoted today in the New York Times Book Review: more

The Ten-Cent Plague
 
To paraphrase the old quote about the Nazis: "They came for the comic books, but I didn't read comic books..." more

Improvisation Games
 
An inspired book... more

Elektra 1957
 
Seismic recording.  more

Carmen Sings Monk
 
It's piano music, but she'll sing it anyway...
more
more things

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This page contains a single entry by Sandow published on December 11, 2006 10:29 AM.

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