New YES CD "Heaven & Earth" due July 8 / U.S. Summer tour

[Yeswave]

>I plan to spend my $ as soon as the vinyl is available, so I guess I'm glad I've gotten to hear it while waiting for that.

Ok, there's one example right away Henry without even trying. It's not 1975. I imagine most people buying the vinyl (well me and bRETT anyway) would like a digital version to listen to as soon as we buy the vinyl. Even Amazon don't have it listed for "Auto-rip" and never mind regaling me with stories about the anticipation of waiting for you new album to arrive I've got plenty of memories of sitting on the bus home reading the sleeve of my new vinyl purchase. See my previous posts about new world & lost youth.

[bondegezou]

Brian Eno gets it. Then again, he always was a bit ahead of his contemporaries:

"I think records were just a little bubble through time and those who made a living from them for a while were lucky. There is no reason why anyone should have made so much money from selling records except that everything was right for this period of time. I always knew it would run out sooner or later. It couldn't last, and now it's running out. I don't particularly care that it is and like the way things are going. The record age was just a blip. It was a bit like if you had a source of whale blubber in the 1840s and it could be used as fuel. Before gas came along, if you traded in whale blubber, you were the richest man on Earth. Then gas came along and you'd be stuck with your whale blubber. Sorry mate – history's moving along. Recorded music equals whale blubber. Eventually, something else will replace it."

- Brian Eno, 2010

Most of us here love and adore the music that came out during this (supposed) bubble and the "something else" has yet to come forth or produce anything to match Close to the Edge or Larks' Tongues in Aspic or My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, so I'm feeling less blasé about the situation than Eno.

Henry

[Yeswave]

Brian Eno gets it. Then again, he always was a bit ahead of his contemporaries:

"I think records were just a little bubble through time and those who made a living from them for a while were lucky. There is no reason why anyone should have made so much money from selling records except that everything was right for this period of time. I always knew it would run out sooner or later. It couldn't last, and now it's running out. I don't particularly care that it is and like the way things are going. The record age was just a blip. It was a bit like if you had a source of whale blubber in the 1840s and it could be used as fuel. Before gas came along, if you traded in whale blubber, you were the richest man on Earth. Then gas came along and you'd be stuck with your whale blubber. Sorry mate – history's moving along. Recorded music equals whale blubber. Eventually, something else will replace it."

- Brian Eno, 2010

I think I'm just going to re-post this every time the subject comes up. Nail on the head.

[bondegezou]

Ok, there's one example right away Henry without even trying. It's not 1975. I imagine most people buying the vinyl (well me and bRETT anyway) would like a digital version to listen to as soon as we buy the vinyl. Even Amazon don't have it listed for "Auto-rip" and never mind regaling me with stories about the anticipation of waiting for you new album to arrive I've got plenty of memories of sitting on the bus home reading the sleeve of my new vinyl purchase. See my previous posts about new world & lost youth.

Many artists do offer an MP3 download with the vinyl release. I agree that would be something that Yes could do. This feels like a fairly minor issue, however.

Henry

[Yeswave]

>Most of us here love and adore the music that came out during this (supposed) bubble and the "something else" has yet to come forth or produce anything to match Close to the Edge or Larks' Tongues in Aspic or >My Life in the Bush of Ghost

There's plenty of young people getting as much out of the music they listen to than we did out of listening to Close To The Edge etc. My son was absolutely beside himself listening to the new Avenged Sevenfold album. He's going to have the same memories of that as I have of falling in love with Tales From Topographic Oceans and he doesn't even have a physical copy.

[tom unbound]

So....it's inappropriate to cancel a sale based on hearing an illegal copy of the album, but it's appropriate to cancel a sale based on hearing a legal copy ??
That's the biggest load of politically-correct bullshit I've heard in a long time.

Steve Howe : If you want to start selling albums again - start writing better music. Start listening to your fans, quit listening to the labels. The labels aren't buying records and CDs, we are. And we're not happy with the crap ya'll been putting out !!
(I'm buying it anyway, I like most of it. )

[Facelift]

Consumers have the ability to try and never buy, whether they love or loathe the music, and that's what they do in large numbers, with the music of everyone from Adele to Yes. This is reducing the amount of new music being made. Everyone who is a fan of music should be concerned by this.

Henry

What if the vast majority of the rock/jazz/classical music that will ever matter to anybody has ALREADY been made?

I'm not arguing that this is the case - just throwing it out there for consideration. Maybe Star Trek was on to something when all of their pop-culture and artistic references came from 19th and 20th centuries (or from Shakespeare).

[Yeswave]

>Steve Howe : If you want to start selling albums again - start writing better music. Start listening to your fans, quit listening to the labels. The labels aren't buying records and CDs, we are. And we're not happy >with the crap ya'll been putting out !!
>(I'm buying it anyway, I like most of it. )

OMG. That's funny. What chance does poor Steve have.

[bondegezou]

>Most of us here love and adore the music that came out during this (supposed) bubble and the "something else" has yet to come forth or produce anything to match Close to the Edge or Larks' Tongues in Aspic or >My Life in the Bush of Ghost

There's plenty of young people getting as much out of the music they listen to than we did out of listening to Close To The Edge etc. My son was absolutely beside himself listening to the new Avenged Sevenfold album. He's going to have the same memories of that as I have of falling in love with Tales From Topographic Oceans and he doesn't even have a physical copy.

Eno describes records as a bubble. The new Avenged Sevenfold album is a record, isn't it? It's still a part of the same bubble, it was still made under basically the same socio-politico-economic model as Tales... and Heaven & Earth, so I'm unclear how your son's enjoyment of it disproves my point.

Indeed, a member of Avenged Sevenfold has complained about how the Internet has destroyed album sales ( http://loudwire.com/avenged-sevenfol...-golfing-more/ ). Avenged Sevenfold and Steve Howe are, broadly, on the same page here. So, again, I'm unclear how this supports your thesis.

Henry

[Adrian]

Most of us here love and adore the music that came out during this (supposed) bubble and the "something else" has yet to come forth or produce anything to match Close to the Edge or Larks' Tongues in Aspic or My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, so I'm feeling less blasé about the situation than Eno.

Henry

Indeed.

Those albums we all love and enjoy were able to be made in large part because labels were giving artists carte blanche in the studio, and the artists were raking in enough money that they could focus on music without having to worry about how to pay their bills. That's not going to happen much anymore, if at all, now that the economic model of the music business has changed so drastically. If guys have to fit in studio time between their mundane day jobs, and studios and labels give them shoestring budgets to work with, I think we can expect the quality of music to diminish going forward. There may be a greater quantity of music to choose from as the means to create music becomes more democratic, but I'll take quality over quantity any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

I'm not naive enough to think I can change the direction of the music industry by actually paying for physical copies of albums and not participating in things like the casual theft of artists' music. The situation is what it is. But like Henry, I'm not quite so blasé about it. I certainly hope my concerns are proved wrong.

[Facelift]

So....it's inappropriate to cancel a sale based on hearing an illegal copy of the album, but it's appropriate to cancel a sale based on hearing a legal copy ??
That's the biggest load of politically-correct bullshit I've heard in a long time.

Steve Howe : If you want to start selling albums again - start writing better music. Start listening to your fans, quit listening to the labels. The labels aren't buying records and CDs, we are. And we're not happy with the crap ya'll been putting out !!
(I'm buying it anyway, I like most of it. )

I don't think it qualifies as politically correct... it's just that it doesn't make a lot of sense. I've always maintained that any recording artist considering the percentage of people who bought the album but wish that they hadn't after hearing it as a meaningful percentage of their sales... well, they weren't doing so well to begin with, anyway. Really, that's nuts. They aren't giving refunds to those people, right?

The industry has just changed. I imagine that one reason why tickets to shows used to be cheaper is because the tours were set up as promotional vehicles for a new album. Now, with albums not bringing in anywhere near as much money, the show *is* the show. So I'm not complaining about paying $75-$100 to see Rush, King Crimson, etc., or $40-$50 for a jazz show set. They need to make more money off performing; I get that.

[Yeswave]

>I'm unclear how this supports your thesis

Well, first of all I didn't realise I was working on a Thesis. Here was me thinking I was having a casual discussion.

>The new Avenged Sevenfold album is a record, isn't it?

In basic terms it's a product of someone's "artistry". Insisiting on calling it a record is just helpful to one point of view.

>I'm unclear how your son's enjoyment of it disproves my point.

The point is about how you market/ promote and sell your music/art. How you get my son to part with his money to buy the album or pay for streaming, buy posters and tickets to see them headline at Download Festival. I have little knowledge of or interest in "socio-politico-economic" models and I'm a socialist

[Yeswave]

>I'm not naive enough to think I can change the direction of the music industry by actually paying for physical copies of albums and not participating in things like the casual theft of artists' music.

I want to pay for music. I don't want to participate in casual theft and I don't want any more 12cm plastic cases invading my home.

[yamishogun]

I want to pay for music. I don't want to participate in casual theft and I don't want any more 12cm plastic cases invading my home.

Here we are, 15 years post-Napster, and still so many music fans do not understand the law. Downloading an unauthorized CD is not stealing, it is copy-write infringement. One can make the argument that one is as bad as the other but if courts don't consider it stealing than why should anyone else?

I know a guy, 67 years old (the baby boomers are the least likely to understand this copy-write infringement concept), and as smeone in the software business, he is vehemently adamant against what he calls "stealing." Yet he will copy-write infringe on a piece of $300 software, use it for a couple of weeks, and then erase it from his hard drive if he doesn't think it is worth buying. Do we let people hotwire a car (remember those days?!) drive off the lot and return it two weeks later if not satisfied or buy it if they are? For a very smart guy, he couldn't see where he was being a complete hypocrite.

I was about to write what Brian Eno did, but he beat me too it. of course, there is more to it than that one great paragraph. It wasn't that there was a "bubble" per se (although I get he is using that more as a window of time) but that the law, written because music lobbies were powerful, elevated the musician far , far above the cosumer. This also likely fueled the "radio star" at the expense of many interesting musicians and bands from 1950 to 2000.

[julioscissors]

I didn't quite get that vibe, not that Howe has been very enthusiastic about any Yes album for nearly two decades!
Henry

If Howe spent as much time writing the music he seems to think Yes should do as he does bitching about the music they do make, maybe he'd have nothing to complain about.

Some people want the problem solved. Some people want the problem.

[bRETT]

Many artists do offer an MP3 download with the vinyl release. I agree that would be something that Yes could do. This feels like a fairly minor issue, however.

Problem here is that the vinyl is still at least a month away, so if that's what I want, I can only hear the album in the meantime by illegally downloading it or buying it twice (or borrowing it, which means I could also rip it).

I submit that advance review copies serve no purpose in this era, and that most of the people who downloaded it just wanted to hear it, not to withhold the ten bucks from Yes. The paid download should have been made available three weeks ago.

[rickawakeman]

Nice show last night in CT. The primary problem, moreso than tempo (White) or lack of virtuosity(Downes), seems to be the transitions between sections of songs.

[bondegezou]

Problem here is that the vinyl is still at least a month away, so if that's what I want, I can only hear the album in the meantime by illegally downloading it or buying it twice (or borrowing it, which means I could also rip it).

I submit that advance review copies serve no purpose in this era, and that most of the people who downloaded it just wanted to hear it, not to withhold the ten bucks from Yes. The paid download should have been made available three weeks ago.

The album is released in 3 days (in Japan). The vinyl is out in 5, albeit only in Europe. The album is available in the US in 9. 2 songs on the album are available already digitally. "At least a month away" seems a little pessimistic even if the vinyl has to get to you in the States. It is, of course, your choice to buy the album in a niche format!

I suggest that the inconvenience of having to wait a few weeks to hear the album is not the worst hardship in the world. It's a hardship I can very much relate to, but perhaps the idea that we should get exactly what he want when we want it isn't completely healthy! But I am not criticising anyone who has pre-ordered the album and has taken the opportunity to listen to it early: only those who want to listen and never pay.

That all said, yes, I agree that a sensible policy in this day and age is to release digital content early.

Henry

[Paulrus]

Interesting interview with Steve!

http://www.musicradar.com/news/guita...-603402/1#null

My favorite quotes:

We left, we didn’t get to know Roy that well – I can’t say that we really know him now... We made the record, and we asked Billy to mix it – we just didn’t feel that it was quite Yes.

The RTB mix would be pretty interesting to hear, I dare say.

And in the double-speak department...

I wouldn’t say that I’ve a grudge, but you know, it does hurt.

I mean, I’m not an egomaniac, but I am Steve Howe – I’ve got some credibility

Regarding the d/l thing, in the old days people would buy the album, cassette, or CD and THEN discover they didn't really like it. A lot of that stuff wound up in the used album/CD bins. The band still made money, though the next time the consumer might have waited to read a review or heard it from a friend before deciding to buy it. Posting the full H&E album to YT was incredibly illegal, but I listened to it anyways cuz I'm a hard core enough fan that I'm a completist and can usually find something worthwhile in an album, even if it's OYE (Close Your Eyes, larf).

[Esoteric]

With regards to AWBH , it was always owned by Sony, no one in the band had the right to licence to Gonzo we have been told , hence Sony wanted it licensed legitimately, it is complicated though what you can add, the owning label have to give permission to add bonus tracks that they don't own etc and we have a very short window to release on other label licences that don't allow for lengthy negotiations and I can see Steve probably has other stuff on his plate at the moment.

[yamishogun]

The RTB mix would be pretty interesting to hear, I dare say.

Would it really be that different? The lackluster performances on boring songs would have already been completed.

[profusion]

Howe's cryptic comments about Roy Thomas Baker confirm the suspicion I had when first listening to H&E that Baker brought nothing to the table. The album sounds a lot like when the band produced themselves on the studio tracks from Keys to Ascension 1.

[the winter tree]

"Night At the Opera" and "The Cars" debut are true RTB classics and very impressive.

I didn't find the 2 albums he did with Starcastle very good though.
Very odd production on those as well as strange mixes.

[Adm.Kirk]

What would be the problem with releasing the CD, LP and digital all at the same time? Of course, Frontiers isn't releasing vinyl in the US for Yes or several other releases: Asia, Chicago or Uriah Heep.

Bill

[Adrian]

Here we are, 15 years post-Napster, and still so many music fans do not understand the law. Downloading an unauthorized CD is not stealing, it is copy-write infringement. One can make the argument that one is as bad as the other but if courts don't consider it stealing than why should anyone else?

Because that's essentially what it is, regardless of how the law defines it.

perhaps the idea that we should get exactly what he want when we want it isn't completely healthy! But I am not criticising anyone who has pre-ordered the album and has taken the opportunity to listen to it early: only those who want to listen and never pay.

Well said.