Some comments on the Grammies, and other awards

I didn’t watch the Grammies this year. I haven’t for many years. I gave up paying attention to them years ago when I realized just how much of a popularity contest they were.

Still, I saw some very interesting news articles about them in the succeeding few days.

Like this one. Apparently, watching lonely adulteresses is more interesting than music awards. Maybe I’m not so far out of the mainstream as I thought. But then again, I wasn’t watching lonely adulteresses, either…

Or this one, by my friend over at Random Thoughts. He was commenting that when big league musicians get together without warning and probably without rehearsal, they sound as bad as the rest of us.

And there’s Letterman’s Top Ten list!

But the one that really sticks in my mind, and the one that might carry the most impact in the long run is this one. The lead on the article says: “Jazz composer Maria Schneider took home a Grammy on Sunday for her album "Concert in the Garden," without selling a single copy in a record store.” It was all sold on the web. In fact, the $80,000 plus it took to record the CD in the first place was all raised by web presales. The CD was funded completely before the first note was recorded.

And now it won a Grammy, without any help from a record label or a retail distributor. It truly is a new world.

Now, as an aside, it’s interesting that by the current rules, this couldn’t happen in the Pearl Awards (the LDS music world’s equivalent to the Grammies). The current rules state that to be eligible for entry, a recording has to have been available for sale in an LDS-oriented retail outlet, or in the LDS products section of a general retail store. Web sales are not currently accounted for, no matter how many are sold that way.

But then, I don’t know of many LDS artists (other than DIY’ers) that are marketing their music exclusively on the web anyway.

But eventually, the Pearls will have to grow up with the times. Web sales will have to be taken into account. It IS a whole new world, and we all need to roll with it!

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Shameless plug: The Latter-Day Songs club newsletter is featuring Fiddlesticks, John Newman, and myself this time!



MRKH
Mark Hansen
http://markhansenmusic.com