[2010-02-26] Amazon Mp3 Samples

[user472884]

Originally Posted by Toc De Mac

But, can't you hear it nevertheless, through the veil?

That's it.

Toc De Mac wins.

[Roman]

Well, I think I like Eden Eden and Grand Central. Her voice sounds really good. And Mes Fantômes is pretty trippy. I want to hear that one in full quality.

I'm sorry to damn it with faint praise, but while it is sweet and soothing and maybe will get Alizée some respect for making a nice artistic album, it seems like a rather "small" production. I don't see how the "mainstream" will take much notice of this. Of course, opinions differ. Many of you here seem to really like it.

I personally feel that if this is supposed to get her more respect than something that was awesome, sold millions, and carried her career for ten years, then I'm missing something. If one says that people have disrespect for the pop music that she made in the past, well, that is ignoring all of the fans. There's nothing wrong with pop music. It is what people like. I am a bit perplexed about that whole discussion of mainstream that was in that magazine article, and the comment about not being trashy holding Alizée back. I think she is either dealing with a lot of stuff that I just don't see, or well, what can I say, maybe she's just trying to do the best with what she has.

It's all very soft and as people say, with a consistent atmosphere. People said that would be a good thing, but it makes me remember why I thought the style changes in Psychédélices would be good. There was enough variety that one could like one song even if not the others or listen to something when in different moods. Well, you can't please everyone.

At least it doesn't seem to have any bizarre stuff like oh say, Timesteps or Biblical Daydreams from Ben's link. Sorry Ben, but I just can't take that stuff. I think it would be cool to maybe take some small elements from that and put it into a more "normal" (whatever that means) song. That could make the experience more profound.

So, I may just get up early tomorrow to find out what this radio program thing is all about - France Bleu. I'm not sure why exactly. After all that I have been through with mostly waiting for Alizée do to something... well, I am fatigued from wishing for something more for so long. I'm not ready to just sign off for good I guess, but I'm just not electrified like I was by her earlier stuff. It seems that the discovery of Alizée and becoming part of the fan community really was a miraculous thing that I don't expect to ever experience again.

[HelixSix]

Originally Posted by lefty12357

Well, I can't really argue with you. You know your own personal tastes. And I also worry that this album may not appeal to the mainstream.

If I understood you correctly, I believe you meant to say she is sacrificing success to satisfy her own personal taste. I think Alizée is a very stubborn and headstrong woman, and no one in the world would be able to convince her that she is doing the wrong thing once she sets her mind to it.

Yeah you got what I meant. I corrected that sentence.

With her stubbornness I think we are seeing that she really wants to distance herself from that pin up image she had. I give her full props for that. And I think we are learning that she doesn't want to be a pop artist either.

Originally Posted by desmodromic

I love it and have no complaints! I'm a true fan with nothing negative to say.... ever.
Track 10 is especially soothing.

I think you are very mixed up with what a fan is. If you were a Tiger Woods fan would you have no complaints about him no matter how many women he was with and how much he hurt his family? I think Tiger messed up pretty badly but I really hope he gets back on track.

Now that situation doesn't compare to anything Alizée has done, but I take the same approach. If she happens to be struggling a little I'm not gonna sit back with blinders on and act like everything she does is always right. I actually care what she does and if she makes mistakes I hope she is able to rebound.

I don't know what a "true" fan is, but if I was a performer I'd want at least a few people to give it to me straight, especially if they have legit reasons, rather than a load of suck up bs.

[lefty12357]

Well Alizée said she wanted her career to endure for the long run. I guess that doesn't mean she has to have a billion fans and be at the top of the charts all the time.

But in the music business, you shoot for the stars and hopefully you'll end up in the clouds. If you shoot for the clouds, you're likely to end up flat on your face on the ground. So in Alizée's mind, is this album a shot at the stars? If so, is she right? I don't know. I'm not necessarily a good judge of what the public will like and embrace. But if you want to shoot for the stars, wouldn't you work with writers and producers who have a habit of reaching the stars? Maybe that is not Alizée's goal.

Having not heard the whole album yet, my only suggestion would have been to add two more songs that really move. This would give the album a better length and provide some more energy. Otherwise, I like everything I've heard so far.

Edit: Oh, and a little side note on the term "Trash" that was recently used in the Technikart interview. I don't think this word is meant to be taken literally in its normal sense. Think of it as a word that is the name of a style or genre, like "Punk", "Metal" or "Pop". The word "Trash" has been around a long time in one form or another, often used to describe primitive, lo-fi, indie music. I think many British artists are currently known for being in this category, hence Alizée's reference to it in the interview. It's not meant to necessarily be derogatory or insulting.

[Deepwaters]

Originally Posted by lefty12357

But in the music business, you shoot for the stars and hopefully you'll end up in the clouds. If you shoot for the clouds, you're likely to end up flat on your face on the ground.

Ah, but WHY has that been so?

Here again, Lefty, we confront the fact that the music business is changing, and the control of the record houses is slipping away. Not only is it changing from the artist's end, with it becoming easier and cheaper all the time to produce music without recourse to a record contract, but on the listener's end it's changing even more.

What's the difference in terms of business between a physical recording model and an internet-download model? This, mainly: all costs of production per recording vanish. There are no materials, no equipment costs, no distribution costs, no storage costs. No warehouses, no trucks or planes carrying music, no presses putting out the discs. This means that there is no urgency about selling music -- no need to reach the clouds -- because there is no window of time after which it must be judged to have succeeded or failed. There are no ongoing costs, and so no financial hemhorrage that sales have to stanch.

Now at the moment Alizée seems to be pursuing a pretty conventional sales path. She has a physical CD in production and will be making it available for purchase at the end of next month. And I'm going to buy one, and I imagine most of us will, even those like myself who did not order the deluxe package. But if she's smart, and if she's retained control of the rights to her music as I hope she has, then she'll subsequently pursue a non-traditional sales path as well.

Here's the thing. Traditional sales of physical CDs can't compete with digital piracy. But worldwide internet sales of downloads can, if it's made very convenient and very cheap. That was the lesson of iTunes, which of course the record companies ignored because they're a bunch of dinosaurs, and put all sorts of stupid barriers on it like DRM and national-market barricades (which in an internet-based sales environment make ZERO sense). You can't stop piracy by force. But you can manage it by making legitimate purchases easy and cheap. Easy and cheap means:

1) Available everywhere in the world with a mouse click.
2) No DRM on the music.
3) Cost of under a Euro per song.

That's going to be the main model of music commerce in the future. A secondary level of sales will involve vinyl records for high-quality sound, but that will always be a smaller, luxury market with downloads being the bread-and-butter. And then of course there are performances; that will remain pretty much unchanged, except that I expect we will see more smaller-venue performing and not so much reliance on blockbuster superhits.

A new world is being born. A lot of the old assumptions are losing their validity. They haven't become totally invalid yet, but they will.

[User22]

She was definitely shooting for the stars....and she reached the upper atmosphere. So I think her and also we will be very pleased with how it's going to sell. I absolutely love these songs....the last half of the songs are amazing x2

[alizeeindia]

Well having played the samples a lot many times, I just love this album. I am dying to get the full songs.

[Criss_pl]

I like those songs, but I would like them more if only songs exposed a bit more Alizée's voice. Maybe, it's only a samples issue, but for me melody covers the voice too strong.
30 seconds is, regarding to whole album, still a bit short preview, some songs sound promising, while samples of others doesn't present them fully.
I can't say that there is a song that I don't like, the are all enjoyable to listen. La Candida sounds a bit odd to me, but it's caused by Spanish lyrics, I never heard Alizée singing in this language, or I missed something?

For now, my personal favorites are Mes Fantômes and Une fille difficile.

And I repeat again. You guys have good points, Deep, lefty, Roman and many more here. I like reading your posts as you always have something smart to say

[lefty12357]

When I say “shoot for the stars”, I’m referring more to the quality of the product, as well as its appeal. I’m saying you must strive for your absolute best effort, because your reward will often be less than your effort. A mediocre effort will usually result in a less than mediocre payoff.

I pretty much agree with everything you’re saying, Deep. But it is difficult dealing with the transitional period between these two models. The conventional model still provides the pipelines to TV appearances and promotion. That infrastructure has been in place a long time and is quite entrenched. Until these other media outlets get with it, independents selling their own products strictly through the internet are going to find it difficult to get other media exposure. I’d hate to see Alizée only available on a crappy Youtube video.

If the Beatles had sold their music on the internet, would their music have been the same? Without the record company, they would have never met George Martin and received his guidance and mentoring. Many considered him the fifth "Beatle". The record companies can provide a useful service, such as developing and mentoring artists, and providing skilled producers who know how to coach an artist to be the best they can be. They can also help to weed out some of the chaff, thus allowing deserving artists a chance to be heard above all the mediocre noise out there. Unfortunately, the changes and consolidation that record companies have experienced over recent years have made them much less effective in this area. The new model should find a way to incorporate this function. In other words, the new model should provide a simple way for and artist to find their “George Martin”.

And some audiophiles are not happy with the quality of MP3’s. And still others (like me) still enjoy having a physical object with artwork to hold in their hands. And there are still many people who love to browse through a good record store. So there is a way to go, still. But that shouldn’t stop artists like Alizée from offering the new model as an alternative right now. And the sooner, the better. When you build a new bridge across a river, you leave the old one up until the new one is finished. But the new bridge nevertheless, needs to be built.

I don’t want anyone to think I’m against this new model. Hell, I’m using it myself. I just don’t promote it on this site.

Sorry for the long, off-topic post.

[Deepwaters]

Let's consider the Beatles for a moment and how they achieved success.

They were not originally recording artists. The original Beatles played the club circuit in Liverpool and Hamburg. (Probably a story in itself why those two cities; Liverpool is obvious because they lived there, but why Hamburg, Germany? I think it was just that was where they could get a gig -- it was a 48-week contract -- and beggars can't be choosers.) No records, no hits, no big venues, just pub music for a couple of years, 1960-1962. Both George Martin and Brian Epstein discovered them through their club performances. Epstein was a record-store owner. He became the group's manager. Martin became their record producer. They produced "Love Me Do" as a single in 1962 and it was a huge success.

Until 1966, the Beatles were first a performing band and second a recording band. After 1966, they stopped touring and worked in the studio. This period saw them produce what I consider their better music, the later albums being far more creative and original than the early stuff, which was basically pop fluff although it had a nice and original sound. But the recording industry (of course it was all vinyl in those days, there was no such thing as a CD) was not where they achieved their success.

No matter how you go about it, the hard part is being discovered. It's easy to get buried in the noise. Whether you're playing the pub circuit and scrambling for gigs (which is still possible I would imagine), producing records in the conventional way, or producing songs for download, the hard part is getting enough people to listen. I think in any popular art (true for mine as well as yours, Lefty) there's a critical mass that has to be reached and then you get "officially" noticed. It's never easy, unless you have Mylène Farmer giving you a jump-start before you even begin.

But even that is a mixed blessing. Alizée now finds herself needing to prove herself, that she can do it without the patronage, that she isn't just someone else's creation. Since she already has a fan base, she is part of the way there out the door, but she hasn't fully achieved it yet and I think she knows that.

I understand what you say about MP3 quality, but that technology continues to improve. Having grown up in the original vinyl era and more recently experienced digital recording, I can tell you that MP3 music quality is certainly no worse than the typical cheaply-made vinyl record played on a stereo that most people could afford from the old days. In fact, when I was a wee one, most music was played on mono, not stereo. (Vinyl/analog recording is potentially better than any digital format, but today's vinyl records are both much higher quality and much more durable than the mass-produced stuff from the past. A typical vinyl record from the 1970s was in stereo at least but not particularly high-quality. Whatever the medium, this is the norm for mass-produced stuff. However, the great thing about digital downloads is that they have the potential to reach a higher standard quality than anything in the past. As broadband becomes the norm and the storage capacity of portable music devices increases, we will get there. But I think there will always be a market for deluxe quality recorded music, too.)