agrammar:

A little over a week ago, for work, I wrote a quick SXSW recap post involving Odd Future — which wound up being trimmed down to a post about Odd Future, and then, after more editors went over it, an article about Odd Future, and then eventually I started to feel like whatever vague point I’d had might have wound up dulled and unclear. So here’s a clearer thought, which is not about Odd Future’s music or Odd Future as people or the value of their work, but more about my relationship with the process of maybe-liking Odd Future.

Because there are a lot of things I love about Odd Future. Some of the albums coming out of the collective actually remind me of listening back to hip-hop from the late 80s and early 90s, when you can actually hear the joy of people creating music because it doesn’t exist yet, and they need it to; Earl’s record in particular has that feeling, a certain playfulness and vitality. And I’m compelled by Tyler’s charisma. I was a sulky teenage boy in the 1990s; of course I can connect with all his grim dark grumbling. As can teenagers today. When I saw the group in Austin, the energy surrounding them was fierce and sort of beautiful. A crowd of kids stood around chanting “FUCK STEVE HARVEY” in an effort to lure the group onto the stage. These were not kids whose lives I imagine being much impinged upon by the existence of Steve Harvey. Was there some point I missed where white Texan parents started boring their kids with his radio show on long drives? On one message board I read, there was a poster who thought “Steve Harvey” might be made up, just an imaginary object of Odd Future’s scorn. This has to say something about the lure of this group, that people want to join them in telling Steve Harvey to fuck off—just because the energy is right, not because they actually care so much who Steve Harvey is.

But then the next night, Odd Future cut short a set at a Billboard showcase—they stormed off after three songs—and I was surprised to see some fans on Twitter grumbling about it, feeling aggrieved or let down. These were people who liked the group’s energy. They just turned out not to like it so much when it was pointed at them and inconveniencing them—when it came off like a fuck-you to them instead of someone else. That’s not surprising: Most everyone wants to be inside the circle of this kind of massive energy, not excluded by it. What’s surprising is that some of these people were less than receptive, months and months ago, when a whole lot of other women and men gave a listen to music from Tyler and Earl and felt excluded by the end of the first verse—because all the ghoulish taunting about raping, kidnapping, or assaulting women wound up disinviting them from the get-go. In fall, Jon Caramanica asked Syd—the woman whose production and DJing underpin a lot of the group’s music—about that. Her answer: “Actions speak louder than words, and they treat me as an equal.” This isn’t exactly a full endorsement of those lyrics; it’s more like a way of saying she feels fully invited within the circle of energy. She’s included.

It’s those taunts in particular that ensure lots of people will never be able to feel entirely included here. There’s been plenty of discussion of the moral dimensions of that fact. Here’s another dimension to consider, though: Doesn’t that just kind of suck, that this group would turn out a lot of fantastic music that unnecessarily dis-includes a big chunk of listeners?

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nerdology:

There has been a lot of talk about streaming music services since Spotify launched in the United States last month.  The two services I keep hearing about are Spotify and Rdio. Since the idea of unlimited streaming music appeals to me I decided to try an experiment; for one month I paid for Rdio and Spotify premium accounts ($10/month each) allowing me to listen to their entire catalogs on my desktop as well as on my mobile device, in my case an iPhone 4.

I spent two weeks in Los Angeles and two weeks in New York City using the desktop and mobile applications really working these two services as hard as I would work iTunes and my iPod (on iPhone).  I have stated that iTunes is the killer app that keeps me in the Apple ecosystem, but as streaming services gain more popularity and have larger collections that might not be true forever.

(You can click on most images for a larger view. This is particularly helpful when I am talking about the mobile applications. -C)

The Services

While both services provide all-you-can-eat streaming music the overall concepts of Rdio and Spotify are different. Spotify aims to blur the line between what you are storing locally on your computer and what is streaming over the internet. Spotify will bring all of your local music into its application and from there you can create playlists that include your music as well as anything available on their service. It’s almost like a music library enhancement.

Rdio scans your locally stored music and adds whatever it can to your streaming “collection”.  Once your scan is done you can hunt down more music to add to your collection, or remove things that you don’t want.  You can always listen to things outside of your collection, but the collection is kind of like your library, it is the stuff that is immediately at your fingertips, and probably the stuff you want to listen too.

You manage a lot of Rdio with the + button. Clicking it allows you to add something to your collection, share with friends, sync to mobile, listen later, add to a playlist… it does everything.  The + changes to a check when it moves into your collection and shows a phone icon if it’s synced to mobile. It’s easy to use and very useful.

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