Author Archives: Tankboy

Finally, a court ruling about digital music that seems grounded in some semblance of reality! ASCAP attempts to double dip into royalty streams by claiming digital download count as public performances has been slapped down by a federal court. This confused me, since ASCAP sells itself as being super artist-friendly, and this tactic was sure to hurt artist’s audiences by making it more difficult to distribute their music. I tried tried to get some insight into this from the local Chicago ASCAP office when the story broke a few weeks ago, but they didn’t return my emails.
As an aside, I’d like to point out that all my interaction with representatives from ASCAP has always been positive, and in Chicago they do their damndest to get exposure for artists they sign with. So I view this whole legal action as a gross misstep grounded in the greed of ASCAPpers in corporate positions … which would probably explain why our local reps had nothing to say. Would you want to go o0n record disagreeing with the actions of the boys upstairs? Probably not.

We’ve all gotten the emails / bulletins / memes asking to throw the iPod — or whatever music media player you prefer — on shuffle and post the first ten songs. Or put those songs into some sort of fake narrative for hilarious (not) results. As I was scrolling through the ol’ tankPOD today, looking to do some housecleaning, I noticed certain bands took up an awful lot of screen time as I scrolled through.
So that got me to thinking, wouldn’t those bands be the best litmus test when it came to really pinpointing one’s musical tastes? I mean, sure, I’ve got loads of super-obscure, truly indier-than-thou bands, unheard masterpieces by regional acts, IDM prone to inducing seizures, and white label singles in the tankPOD / diPOD team, but when pressed what really informs my tastes?
So I did an experiment and decided to list all the bands who have four or more albums on my MP3 / M4A / OGG / WAV player in hopes that such information would be rather revealing (full list after the jump). You see, in this age of instant gratification I think it really says something about a band if you feel the need to carry that much of their material around with you at all times. Such a list might prove unintentionally revealing and betray one’s actual musical tastes, even if they are usually hidden under a patina of hipster aloofness.
Of course such a list is automatically going to skew towards older acts, since it takes a few years to push out 4+ albums’ worth of music, but that would make such a list an even better reference for divining one’s musical tastes, since it would probably skew towards artists that helped formulate a particular individual’s musical background. Right?
In my case the result pretty obviously favored artists that came to the fore in the ’80s and ’90s, no surprise there. And it is pretty light on electronic artists, but that makes sense when you consider that most electronic music lives in the world of the single, not the multi-album arc.
The interesting about my own results, actually, is that I almost NEVER actually listen to any of the 4+ album bands on my iPod anymore. It’s almost like they’re there as more of a security blanket. Truth be told, I have so much new stuff coming in every day I need to listen to, for various reasons, I rarely get the chance to peruse deep cuts from my personal catalog … but it’s interesting to note because I think these are the sorts of discs I may not listen to every day (or even once a year), but that I might like to take to a desert island to keep me going in tough times.
Anyway, if you’re interested, my list is after the jump. Feel free to post your own lists in the comments and let me see where your musical soul actually dwells when no one else is around to judge.
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