tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7309354809775228047.post1208439616780577501..comments2015-04-27T18:51:40.484-07:00Comments on Spin This: Odds and ends and Arcade FireJonathan Pottshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18433924194960127561noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7309354809775228047.post-72458210594889104532010-08-16T19:08:38.865-07:002010-08-16T19:08:38.865-07:00The NY Times article is an extremely contrived bit...The NY Times article is an extremely contrived bit of writing. It might as well have been written months in advance, regardless of how the launch was recieved. <br /><br />Honestly, the only backlash I'm got a sense of is the one music hacks seem to assume is happening - rather than anything I can actually see. Indeed, the entire basis for the this article appears to be a single stray three-word-tweet.Hmm.<br /><br />As far as I can see, Arcade Fire fans - and indeed, even people who aren't so hot on them - very much see this as a little victory for the oddballs, on their behalf. Arcade Fire, love 'em or hate 'em, are very much the real deal. They loving making music for people, and they love making music people love. They're on a quirky independant label that people like, they rarely compromise on anything that matters, and the've continuously found new ways to reach out to their audience. This campaign had a number of ingenious ideas driving it. It's beyond me why so many journos have gotten so wrapped up in the significance of the 3.99 thing when the synchronised artwork was a far greater innovation, both as a creative means of presenting your music and as a canny and easy way to discouraging filesharing without penalising paying customers with DRM. And that DID cost full price, and plenty of people paid it - something that was lost in all the acres of text putting the whole thing down to the discounted price.<br /><br />I think this gem of a quote neatly encapsulates the quality of this article for me:<br /><br /><b>"Ultimately, the most indie thing about Arcade Fire might simply be that it owns its means of production. "</b><br /><br />The only indie thing about Arcade Fire is that they're uh, independant. "Indie" used to be more than just a label for an aesthetic, and it feels like a music journalist ought to be aware of it.<br /><br />This kind of lazy writing really bugs me, and it says more about the worst curses of music journalism than it does about music itself - writing to satisfy an expected narrative, rather than actually organically observing anything.Jenny Dnoreply@blogger.com