Ian Rogers, CEO of Topspin and former head of Yahoo Music, gave the keynote address recently at the GRAMMY Northwest MusicTech Summit 2008. In his speech, Rogers explains the current state of the music business as he see it.

He explains that the sale of physical product, CDs, continues to decrease, and while digital sales are increasing, they aren’t making up the difference. Further, as the market becomes more single driven than album driven, the value of a unit of music is further decreased.

His response to this situation?

I don’t care.

He’s not just cold hearted toward the business. His reason is that continuing to think about the music business in these terms isn’t helping. He equates it to talking about the death of the cassette tape during the era of the CD.

The difference is that when we moved from cassette to CD the winners were the same (big companies who owned access to cash, distribution, and marketing) and the definition of winning was the same (more units sold for these big companies).

The game has changed though, not just from one physical format to another, but the physics of the media itself has changed. He concludes that the definition of winning cannot remain constant in light of this major shift.

He quotes Chuck D from Public Enemy as saying earlier this year,

There is nothing wrong with the music business, there is a problem with the CD business.

(more…)

Not long ago I came across a new blog site called Culture 11. The site’s authors say their goal with the site is to provide some perspective on life in America as culturally conservative Americans find themselves facing changing times and uncertainty.

Much of the site’s content speaks to the intersection of religion and culture.

One week ago, one of the authors, Noah Berlatsky, posted a blog entitled Bluegrass Apocalypse. In the article he states that

Bluegrass has been transformed from a mostly played-out festival circuit relic into a viable commercial force. But at what cost?

He then attempts to explain this transformation as the result of efforts to

Polish bluegrass up, recruit a female singer, and capture a bigger audience

You know of whom he speaks, Alison Krauss. Berlatsky describes Krauss’ music as “vaguely spiritualized prettiness” and then goes on to make this incredible statement.

As this suggests, I loathe Alison Krauss’s music in all its obsessive, over-produced perfection. To me, it sounds like every note on her albums has been focus-grouped, voted on by committee, and then carefully performed by a soulless government functionary. The vestige of rural authenticity — the tunes, the fiddles ‚Äî are there almost for purposes of ritual emasculation.

Joe Carter, another author on the site, responded with his own piece from which I took the title of this post, Bluegrass Blasphemy. Carter takes Berlatsky to task for being an “urban, over-educated atheist,” and defends Alison’s honor as the primary instructor who gives “singing lessons to the seraphim” in her spare time.

Berlatsky then responded on his personal blog by saying that Carter, indeed anyone who claims “country authenticity,” is simply a poseur. His reasoning?

…country has gotten to this place where credibility has everything to do with liking this or that product, and very little to do with any actual values or morals. Rural identity is just another affectation, bolstered through arbitrary product purchases.

Krauss’ music is the result of sheer giftedness combined with countless hours of rigorous devotion to a craft. Berlatsky seems to have equated inauthenticity with this exceeding excellence.

As someone who grew up in a rural community and currently lives another, I rejoice to see the virtuosity of the practitioners of the bluegrass arts. In no way do I find them inauthentic, or think them to be poseurs.

A mission team from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY recently took the Gospel, and some bluegrass, on a mission trip to Newfoundland.

The team consisted of 19 students and faculty members from the seminary. The team put together a bluegrass band comprised of seminary students, and used the music as a means to draw a crowd. Other team members then interacted with listeners and attempted to steer conversations to the Gospel.

My impression from the article (available here) is that the music enjoyed a warmer reception than the message. The students did learn valuable lessons about sharing the Gospel in another culture. Newfoundland may not be that different from American culture in general, but from the culture of Louisville, KY there is considerable difference.

Sometimes you can take something that seems incongruent, like bluegrass and Canada, and those two actually have a common denominator in that they can tie together to get a hearing for the Gospel.

It seems bluegrass and the Gospel can cross cultural boundaries.

If you’re interested, you can read the original article here.

Family bluegrass band Cherryholmes is making its first attempts to cross over to country radio.

According to a Reuters/Billboard report, Cherryholmes is remixing – with added piano and drums – This Is My Son, one of the cuts from their forthcoming album, Cherryholmes III – Don’t Believe, and releasing it as a single to be promoted to country radio.

The band has a few other ambitious plans that make this fall a very busy time for them.

You can read the full story at reuters.com.

There are audio samples from the new CD at the Skaggs Family Records’ website.