I’m not gonna write a book.

Not a day goes by that I don’t get that e-mail. Well, at least multiple times a week. People think that will give me the imprimatur of success, will cement my credibility!

But the bottom line is I already reach more people than just about every author alive and if I took time out to write something new, I wouldn’t be able to do this.

You see I love the connection. Even more I love the writing. This is what I do. I’m not gonna change it for some old wave wankers who’ve got no idea what’s going on.

You want to talk about a challenged business… If you think music is bad, you’ve got to look at books. The quantities they sell are paltry. They don’t know who their readers are. If you think musicians are loath to social network, you don’t know any authors. They want to hang at home, preferably writing in longhand or on a Smith-Corona, thinking there is fulfillment and joy in doing it the old way. But not a one of them doesn’t complain that he doesn’t have more readers. That’s the nature of art, you want more people to be exposed to it.

And now you can do this, but the old pros refuse to. Don Henley refuses to participate online, won’t tweet, won’t comment, yet he’s one of the most erudite and opinionated musicians alive. Huh? What’s the problem Don? You afraid of the haters?

Oh, they’re legion. They come out of obscurity to eviscerate you and then go back into their holes, wearing the cloak of anonymity all the while. But if you’re not bobbing in the cesspool online you’re not even playing. It’s like refusing to be on AM radio in the sixties. Huh? That’s where all the people are!

Some days I write great stuff, and sometimes my work is mediocre. By my standards anyway. I’m never bad. You know why? I’ve done it too much. That’s your 10,000 hours right there. But although my audience likes good, they don’t really erupt until I create great. Which no one can do on a regular basis. So I keep pushing the rock uphill, waiting for inspiration, waiting to create incredible so my computer starts ringing like a pinball machine and I’ve got a euphoria…that lasts until the end of the day if I’m lucky. Then it’s back to the salt mines to create something new.

And that’s my philosophy. I don’t believe in selling, I believe in creating. I’m better off staying home and writing than doing any publicity. Because publicity is so bad at hitting the target. Most people reading or listening or watching just don’t care. But if I win online, my minions will forward what I have to say to like-minded people. I win through my art. Or lose, that’s the nature of the game.

I revere Tom Wolfe. But he took a decade to write a novel that was poorly reviewed and it sank like a stone. He could have serialized it online and worked out the kinks while he was building an audience and had a huge hit. That’s how he did it with “Bonfire Of The Vanities,” it originally appeared in serialized form in “Rolling Stone.” But NO, as John Belushi once bellowed, he had to do it the old school way, he had to employ a traditional publisher and get that big fat check. I hope that money keeps him warm at night, while he’s absent from the public discussion.

That’s what creators want… To be part of the public discussion.

And let me tell you, you don’t always win.

But the thrill is in playing.

The online game is a full contact sport. It’s like nothing previous. You’ve got to be great, you’ve got to persevere, and if you gain traction you can reach more people than traditional media outlets. Hell, I reach more people than some TELEVISION STATIONS!

And I’m not saying this to boast, I’m just telling you that if you’re inured to old rules you’re doomed to failure. The old metrics no longer apply.

Create.

Display online. Good and bad, warts and all.

Build an audience.

Have fun.

Don’t worry about money.

And if you hang in there for years, and are truly exceptional, you will be a star.

And the kind of star you’ll be might look different from the radio and video stars of yore, but chances are you’ll be bigger than the radio and video stars of today!

1. Is a revenue producing item for the label, it’s how they get their money back.

2. Is a trigger for publicity.

3. Is too long. On vinyl, you were loath to put more than forty minutes of music on a side. The most classic of double albums, and the cliche is there’s not one that could not be a single, fit on one CD no problem.

4. On vinyl there were four key tracks. Openers and closers on both sides. The CD is incomprehensible. You don’t know what songs you should check out, so overwhelmed, you ignore everything but the hit.

5. Had its breakthrough with “Sgt. Pepper.” If you’ve got a rock opera or something to say over ten or twelve tracks, be my guest, create an album. But I can’t even remember the last cohesive album statement that was any good. This is a straw man.

6. Mainstream publicity is the weakest of them all. Because the mainstream constantly needs a new stream of info. And your product gets brought down by the crap they feature the following day or week. You want word of mouth publicity. And word of mouth publicity doesn’t work on albums, but tracks. You want to go viral. This depends on a cut, not an album. The days of hearing a song on the radio and buying the album so you could hear that and more are done. There’s not a single in existence that you can’t hear alone on YouTube.

7. CDs at gigs are souvenirs. People don’t buy them to listen.

8. The fact that your hard core listens to your album is fine if you’re satiated with only reaching your hard core. But if you find a musician who’s satisfied with the size of his audience, he’s not a musician.

9. Network news was killed by cable news which was killed by the Net. People want the latest on demand. And you’re dropping an album every year or so? And the radio is eking out the music track by track, if you’re lucky? In today’s world you want to be in the public eye constantly. I’m not saying you should make less music, just that you shouldn’t see it as an album.

10. With the cost of production and distribution so low, it’s time to experiment, which is anathema to the dying majors. If you’re a metal band with country roots, cut a country song, why not? The album release cycle was a prison, you’ve been unchained, why do you want to stay inside?

11. The audience has no time. There are too many stimuli. You’re looking for the one track that can set off the explosion. And you never know what track that will be, which is why you must keep creating. Otherwise you can make an album that stiffs and your career can be over.

12. The audience is looking for great things. If you create something great, there’s a plethora of people ready to spread the word. This is more powerful than any newspaper or radio station. But your track must be great, otherwise virality stops cold. You can buy a few YouTube views but you can’t fake virality. The old days of paying radio to play your middling song into a hit are dead.

13. Labels don’t want to abandon the album because it changes their revenue model. You’ve got to pay for the exec’s car, his kids’ private school, his vacation… He likes the old way, he’s gonna fight for the old way.

14. The acts listened to albums so they want to cut albums. Not realizing the way you become a hero today is to do it the opposite or a new way from your heroes. You don’t want to do what’s already been done.

15. The album will not die overnight. But it’s dying as we speak, look at track sales.

16. Sales are miniscule compared to listens. We’re going to a listen world, i.e. streaming. It’s not whether you sold it, but whether people listened to it!

17. You’re the victim of too many bad albums before you.

18. There will always be a demand for superstar albums. But are you a superstar? Furthermore, there are fewer stars than ever before. People don’t have time for more.

19. You want a career. Careers live in the minds of listeners, not gatekeepers. The listener wants nothing more than new music. You don’t want to go on a date once a year with the love of your life, but constantly. And you don’t want to go to the same places and do the same things.

20. Albums were originally collections of 78s. Don’t let the format dictate the music. That begat Napster, when there were too many overpriced CDs with only one good track. You’ve been freed. Then again, it’s a wilderness and you don’t know where to go.

21. Think outside the box. Don’t do it like everybody else does. Make a twenty minute single. Or a two minute one. Issue a challenge to yourself or your audience. This stimulates and creates heat. And what you want is heat.

22. Albums ruled in the classic rock era because of scarcity. You couldn’t hear much and you couldn’t afford much. You played every cut because it was all you had. It’s kind of like dating. Once upon a time you were limited to the people you bumped into physically, now your universe is…the universe! You can even hook up with Russians online! Tell someone to date someone undesirable while they’re hanging out at the Playboy Mansion. That’s kind of like telling someone to listen to your crap when they can listen to the best music made, which is just as free online.

23. Artists need to be leaders, not followers. In this case, the audience wants singles and it’s the artists who are locked in the past. Artists need to get in front of the audience, they need to lead, to titillate and entrance!

NO ALBUMS

A circle jerk in a world where nobody has time for anything but the best. I hope you have fun making your long player, because you’re the only one who cares!

ATTENTION SPANS

Are huge. Assuming people are interested. Just watch someone play “World of Warcraft.” Then again, WOW is better than your music. People have all the time in the world for that which is truly incredible. We live in a world of hits and misses, there’s nothing in between. If you’re not the best at what you do, give up or enjoy your third class ride.

RADIO

Didn’t break PSY and it didn’t break Kendrick Lamar. Sure, we’ve still got CDs, some people still use Windows XP, but XP’s not the future and neither is radio. We live in an on demand world. If you can’t pull it immediately, no one’s gonna sit around waiting for it.

IMMEDIACY

You can cut a track in an hour and have it up online almost instantly. But acts take a year to make an album and wait for the right time to release it and be the beneficiary of one shot of publicity. Music is not like a movie. Music, when done right, plays forever. It builds over time, it doesn’t spike so much as rise and plateau. Release it when it’s ready. There’s little money in recordings anyway. Why are you playing the old game?

DADDY’S MONEY

Take it and you give up control. And in art, control is everything.

STREAMING

22% of  Beggars’ Group’s revenues come from streams, and most of its acts make more money from streaming than track sales. But you refuse to be on Spotify. Then again, you’re probably not as good as Adele, Jack White and… Then again, your label probably doesn’t give you 50% of streaming revenues, like Beggars does.

Streaming already won. YouTube is America’s radio station.

Read this article:

TIME

Even though you can reach everybody in an instant, it takes longer to make it. And even the biggest stars in the world don’t have the penetration of yore. I bet at least a third of you reading this have never heard “Umbrella,” or any Rihanna song. But you won’t read that statistic in the newspaper, which believes it’s still the arbiter of truth and that everybody is reading it.

TOMORROW

Fleetwood Mac had it right, if you stop thinking about tomorrow I hope you’re happy with today, and knowing this is the best it’s ever gonna get. What’s the end game for the L.A. “Times”? It balanced the books, reducing its staff and news hole, and now you can get the local info in the “New York Times,” and everything else everywhere else. Tribune may have emerged from bankruptcy, but the company ain’t going up.

CABLE

With a bill that high it can’t survive. You’re not gonna pay your wireless bill and your cable bill. And you can see the shows you want online. Cable is the music business in 2000, it just doesn’t know it yet.

SPAM

No one is going to listen to your music because you sent them an e-mail, tweet or Facebook link. Hope this effort makes you feel good, because it’s worthless.

MUSIC

Is the most powerful medium in the world, but the people making it treat it like a second class citizen. They let executives tell them how to change it and die to tie in with companies with different agendas. Want to be a big, powerful success? Make something unique, individual, with something to say, and don’t sell out. What was PSY selling again? HIMSELF!

STYLO

Howard Stern must have been in reruns, because I was pushing the buttons on the satellite and I heard this track on the Spectrum. I was entranced and transported, lifted from the cabin of my car into the stratosphere, I immediately came home and dialed up this Gorillaz track.

I didn’t think I liked Gorillaz or Mos Def, but suddenly I was a huge fan. That’s the power of the filter. With so much music out there, especially with tons of detritus, it’s easy to let it all bounce off you and ignore it. Then someone knowledgeable points the way and you smile and say I LOVE THIS!

We were in Aspen and Philip Blaine gave a ten minute history of electronic music. He whipped through genres and years and was so excited about what he was talking about I immediately wanted to hear every track. So I told him to create a playlist, the history of EDM, so you (and me!) could be clued in.

Here it is.

P.S. I’ve attached a Spotify playlist. Unfortunately every cut is not available, most glaring is the absence of Moby’s breakthrough “Play,” and I’m not sure each track is the definitive one, but it’s a start.

P.P.S. “Stylo” has a troubled history, Eddy Grant says it’s a rip-off, and listening to his “Time Warp,” you kind of agree

And I’m sure the EDM police will crack down upon me and say “Stylo” doesn’t fit the genre, but listen anyway, have your horizons broadened, discover that what you always listen to is not the only thing you like.
_____________________________________________
_____________________________________________

PHILIP BLAINE’S EDM PLAYLIST

Bob –

As requested here is the list. It’s simply some highlights of artists during my personal journey through the history of Electronic Dance Music (EDM).

There are earlier artists, and artists that have done just as much to influence EDM at large, but here is a selection from the talk I presented briefly at the Aspen Live Conference. Again, this is just a sampling…

KRAFTWERK

Interestingly in the ’70s during the time of disco – and although their pure electronic sound was a different dynamic – Kraftwerk’s music was also played in some disco clubs and became a crossover option for DJs. Their sound is still relevant today, and they garner the utmost respect from other musicians and fans alike. Check out the songs “Trans-Europe Express” and “Tour de France.”

NEW ORDER

Released Blue Monday in 1983, maintains as a timeless song before its time. New Order led to many influences (In some ways everyone in EDM) and they co-owned the club Hacienda (Manchester, UK) with Factory Records. As you will see on this list, many of the artists came from this club scene.

FRANKIE KNUCKLES

In the early 80’s Knuckles played a club called the Warehouse in Chicago. I never went but heard the lore for years to come. This “House” music deemed him the godfather of House. Check out “Your Love” and “Whistle Song.”

DERRICK MAY

Derrick’s “Strings of Life” took me on a journey of my mind, career, and the dance floor. Although unleashed in 1987, it made strong influences for years to come. One has to mention names Juan Atkins and Kevin Saunderson and then Detroit Techno was born…

Rhythim Is Rhythim – Strings of Life (Original Mix)

KEVIN SAUNDERSON

His project Inner City released two hit singles: “Good Life” and “Big Fun,” which dominated the dance floors for years after their release in 1988.

A GUY CALLED GERALD

Also from Manchester, England, in 1989 with his underground acid-house track “Voodoo Ray.” Just listen to this song… It makes the list. Period. Acid House stormed the underground… And helped birth the first rave scene in the USA… Los Angeles. A place of great weather and deserts perfect for raving.

THE KLF

A punk rock mentality gone pop. Two UK industry veterans, Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, came together and left a huge mark on the music scene from 87-92. They were also known for their publicity stunts. One was a press trip to an island off of Scotland where they had to wear hooded robes and partake in a ceremony where they burned a wicker man. Also, in later years they burned million British Pounds in public. Check out “What Time is Love,” “3am Eternal” and “Last Train to Transcentral.”

ORBITAL

In 1990, two brothers, Phil and Paul Hartnoll, came to my house with their manager Rob and blew my mind with Chime and the entire album. They are also noted as being the first EDM act to dominate a proper festival. The most proper of them all… The British institution of Glastonbury in 1994. Also listen to “Halcyon.”

808 STATE

A part of other artists from the influential club Hacienda, 808 State truly hit America with “Cubik” in 1991. Which was added to radio stations like KROQ in many major markets. Their name refers to the 808 drum machine. Also check out “Pacific State” and “Ooops.”

MASSIVE ATTACK

In 1991, “Unfinished Sympathy” introduced the world to the genre Trip Hop. Also from their hometown of Bristol were their associates Tricky and Portishead. Other early classic songs are “Safe From Harm,” “Blue Lines” and “Protection.”

2 BAD MICE

“Bombscare” released in 1992. When founding member Rob Playford came on the scene and then eventually started the record label Moving Shadow they became synonymous with a variety of sounds… Breakbeat of course, then sounds that led to Jungle and Drum ‘n’ Bass. These Moving Shadow sounds also influenced many current Dubstep artists. Also, listen to the wicked “Hold it Down.”

JAM AND SPOON

Their ambient techno sound was not consistently popular when it hit the scene in 1992, although it stood apart from everything else. “Stella” helped defined this new genre.

PAUL OAKENFOLD

He popularized the art of DJing like no other. He opened for U2 in 1993 and started Perfecto Recordings. Mostly a DJ and a producer he didn’t release a full studio album until 2002 when he had a big his with “Ready Steady Go.”

MOBY

After the Chicago and Detroit pioneers, Moby (NYC) was one of the first US artists with his song “Go” in 1992 to get international acclaim. He is also the one of the first EDM artists to become so commercially loved and accepted that every track from his 1999 album “Play” was licensed for use in TV shows, commercials, and films. Every song is a gem, listen to the whole thing start to finish.

UNDERWORLD

When “Dubnobasswithmyheadman” was released in 1994, I was hit like I was when I first heard Nirvana. They played their first USA show at my Organic festival in 1996. Along with Danny Boyle, Underworld was a producer and did the soundtrack for the Olympics in 2012. Noted songs are: “Dirty Epic,” “Born Slippy,” and “King of Snake.”

CHEMICAL BROTHERS

Yet another from Manchester! They were first known in 1993 as The Dust Brothers (not the US artist) and their remixes they did for prominent EDM artists of the time. In 1995, with the name change came the album “Exit Plant Dust.” Their sampling of live drum sounds made them one of the first EDM artists with popularity in the indie rock circles. Check out “Leave Home,” “Setting Sun,” and “Block Rockin’ Beats.”

DJ SHADOW

1996 the album “Endtroducing” was made entirely of sampled sounds… This album defined the diversity of EDM. Its wide range of truly cultured chill out/trip hop type sounds are a delight! Must listen to whole album. Once you are a few minutes in you’ll hear why.

GOLDIE

He became the first commercially prolific Drum n’ Bass artist. He played breakbeats with a new technique, and is credited with inventing the production technique of “time stretching.” His song that got me was “Inner City Life.”

KRUDER AND DORFMEISTER

1998, The K & D Sessions – both original work and a compilation of other artists mixed in. An evening with this album is for EDM which for others might be Barry White or Miles Davis. Another case where one must listen to whole album but if to pick one song check out “Lexicon.” They are most associated with the genre of Trip Hop.

FATBOY SLIM

Became so popular that he was asked to perform at Mick Jagger’s birthday party. He turned down the gig. Noted for sampling many popular songs and many pseudonyms. He released the projects first album “Better Living through Chemistry” in 1996. Check out “The Rockafeller Skank,” “Praise You” and the video for “Weapon of Choice.”

ARMAND VAN HELDEN

The Godfather of Re-mixes, he popularized the mixing of known artists into dance tracks. His first smash hit, “Professional Widow,” was a remix of a Tori Amos song, and became a club sensation, eclipsing sales of the original track. His work reinvented the way we experienced music, with his new sound called “speed garage.” His mixes of songs including Sneaker Pimps’ “Spin Spin Sugar” were highly influential from his start in 1996.

DAFT PUNK

Their first album “Homework” was in 1997. Unlike many of the other EDM artist who were single oriented, they were able to do their EDM-mastery via the traditional multi-song album format as a complete work of art. Each song was made into a music video, and was elaborately art-directed to create visually stunning works. Their distinct sound was highly sampled by many artists including Kanye West. To be noted: One of the members of Daft Punk, Thomas Bangalter, had project called Stardust which released one song in 1998 called “Music Sound Better With You” and is legendry EDM anthem. Other songs to check out are: “Da Funk,” “Around the World,” and “One More Time.”

Stardust Music Sounds Better With You (High Quality)

CAFE DEL MAR

Unlike the rest of this list… Cafe del Mar was the influence of a notable sound… It defined “Chill-out Music,” and was widely played in cafes, bars, and even spas world wide. Not an artist but a club… then as an album (from many collaborators). The club is on the island of Ibiza – it was EDM as travel and leisure. They are now on the 18th compilation album release.

This is a simple stab at history… Meat Beat Manifesto, Leftfield, The Orb, Groove Armada, The Prodigy and later of course Skrillex, Deadmau5 and literally hundreds of artists are not mentioned here. Holy shit, Roni Size and Adam F… EDM is vast and here to stay… What a long strange trip it’s been…

Please join in…listen, hit the dance floor and sample this culture!

Philip Blaine’s EDM Playlist – Spotify