Music Industry

The Talking Heads’ David Byrne on the State of Music

This is a long read from Salon, but it’s worth it as Byrne has some interesting things to say about where music is today and where it’s headed.  For example:

My daughter, she’ll play stuff on her phone and just put the phone on the table, and you think “all the time and effort we put into recording and this is the way it ends up, on a phone speaker.” And before I start grumbling about it, I realize that how I heard music, pop songs, in the beginning out of a little transistor –Under my pillow, close to my ear and it was the crappiest, crappiest sound, AM radio or whatever. But hearing those songs changed my world, so I thought, you know, it can have a huge personal, psychological, social impact even if the sound is really crappy, which doesn’t mean that it should be crappy. But it means that it doesn’t totally kill it.

He also has a great story about Bing Crosby and his role in today’s recording technology.  Keep reading.

Alan Cross

is an internationally known broadcaster, interviewer, writer, consultant, blogger and speaker. In his 40+ years in the music business, Alan has interviewed the biggest names in rock, from David Bowie and U2 to Pearl Jam and the Foo Fighters. He’s also known as a musicologist and documentarian through programs like The Ongoing History of New Music.

Alan Cross has 40229 posts and counting. See all posts by Alan Cross

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