More fanfare for the downfall of the music biz

Interesting story in the New York Times today about the fizzling music biz. Seems Apple iTunes sales are not making up for billions of dollars in lost CD revenue.

In th piece, titled Music Industry Braces for the Unthinkable, analysts see digital music sales as coming to a halt. From the story:

In each of the past two years, the rate of increase in digital revenue has approximately halved. If that trend continues, digital sales could top out at less than $5 billion this year, about a third of the overall music market but many billions of dollars short of the amount needed to replace long-gone sales of compact discs.

"Music’s first digital decade is behind us and what do we have?" said Mark Mulligan, an analyst at Forrester Research. “Not a lot of progress.”

Gorillaz and the future of the mobile app electro-music sketchbook

This fall, while Damon Albarn was on a U.S. tour with his animated super group The Gorillaz, he was experimenting with his new iPad and boldly blazing a new trail in music making.

Check out a video from the new record here.

With a dozen or so mobile apps -- from software emulators of the Korg Electribe drum machine to a goofy app that translates line drawings into sound -- Albarn composed 15 songs (or 14 songs and one bizarre yodeling track) that he mastered and released as a free Gorillaz album, The Fall, available on the Gorillaz website. (Albarn lists the apps he used to create the album here, too)

The result -- the first record I've heard of done entirely on a single mobile device --  is an album that is much smaller scale than a regular Gorillaz affair. There's not a revolving cast of special guests -- no De La Soul or Snoop Dog -- though one song features Bobby Womack singing and playing guitar.

There are other minimal contributions from a few guest musicians -- Damon's pals Mick Jones and Paul Simonon (both of the Clash, in case you don't know) add guitar and bass to a couple tracks* -- but The Fall maintains a much more intimate feel. Mostly, it's Albarn's voice and his iPad.

I'm pinning rock hope for the new year on REM

Finally. Something to be excited about.

As far as I'm concerned, the first album to really get excited for this year is the new one from REM, Collapse Into Now, due on March 8.

Before you read any further, go to remhq.com and send the band your e-mail to get a link to download a new single, "Discoverer,"an even-paced, mid-tempo rocker with a good dose of distortion that's got a little of that old Monster sound. If you've followed the band, the it's a sound that would sound at home on the band's last one, Accelerate. 

If you haven't been following the band recently, Accelerate was a really great album. A return to the early '90s for the band -- a period when they were comfortable kings of the newly commercially viable alternative rock world. In fact, a case could be made that REM invented alternative rock with their first single "Radio Free Europe" and album, Murmur, a watershed record that would influence every alt and indie rocker after. Go back and listen to Murmur and Reckoning, perhaps the best 1 and 2 punch by a brand new rock band ever.