Great Drumming on Spotify

I decided that I wanted to pass along some great drumming tracks to my percussionist brethren.   Using Spotify, I have started to develop a list of great drummers and great drumming to share with all of you.

Here is the link to the playlist titled Great Drumming

This first iteration is quite bare and I will be updating it weekly and monthly as I find more great tracks to share with you. My goal isn't to find just the fastest or technically proficient drummers out there, but rather to build a mix of musicians who bring a variety of qualities to the table.

On the first list you will find:

Steve Gadd performing Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover

Buddy Rich performing his infamous West Side Story (Live)

Bernard Purdie with Aretha performing Chain of Fools

Jeff Porcaro performing that nasty groove on Rosanna

Joe Morello performing Take Five

Stewart Copeland performing Message in the Bottle

Tony Williams performing Agitation

And many, many, more.

I would love to hear your comments on who should be added to the list. Once again you can get to it here.

Keep Drumming. 

Make the most of an hour of practice.

Let's face it. As drummers, we rarely have the ability to practice for hours on end. So when we are afforded the opportunity to hit those skins, we have to make the most of it. Quite honestly, I would rather practice an hour a day for five to six days a week, than three hours every three days, but hey, that's just me.

So if you have an hour of practice time. How do you make the most of it and still enjoy what your doing?

Well, I found the answer lies in breaking apart your practice routine. This is how I roll (get the pun).


Module 1:
1 Hour of Available Practice (20 minute milestones):

First 20: play along to music that is outside your comfort range. I am a fan of using Spotify, MOG, Slacker, or any other Internet based radio station. I choose a channel, say Jazz, and play along.

Second 20: break out the study materials. You can work on your sight reading, Latin rhythms, independence, or anything else that "challenges" your skill set.

Final 20: free play. You should always have some free time in your practice routine. Again, I go to Spotify, MOG, Slacker, or any other Internet based radio station and jam along to the channel, playlist, tracks, or album of my choice.


Module 2:
1 Hour of Available Practice (more in depth study time):


First 15: play along to music that is outside your comfort range. Same rules as module one, but for only 15 minutes.

Middle 30: break out the study materials. Again, same as module one, but you will be devoting more time, about ten minutes, to more in depth rehearsal that challenges your skills.

Final 15: free play. Remember, you should always have some free time in your practice routine. Again I go to Spotify, MOG, Slacker, or any other Internet based radio station and jam along to the station of my choice.

Module 3:
1 Hour of Available Practice (10 minute style challenge):

This practice routine is designed to challenge your ability to play multiple styles. Again I use Spotify, MOG, Slacker, or any other Internet based radio station, and switch the station every ten minutes. For example: country for ten minutes, jazz for ten, rock for ten, pop for ten, funk for ten, and rap for ten. The goal is to move quickly between channels so you can get used to playing in any style "on the fly".

Feel free to use different modules different days of the week, or even make up your own. I find when you break apart your routine, you can accomplish much more in your practice time and really enjoy what you are doing.  So drum on and let me know how this works for you.

P.S. This works for any instrumentalist, by the way.

Spotify -VS- Mog

I have been using MOG for a little over a year, and really liked the service. I paid the $10 per month premium fee that allowed me to download as much music as my iPhone could hold and then play it back whenever I wanted, even without an Internet connection. From a financial standpoint, it just made more sense for me to drop $10 per month and get access to hundreds of albums as opposed to buying a single album at $10 or single tracks at $1.99 from iTunes. It's just a better way to explore new music.

Then I noticed that I was the only one on MOG. Many of my fellow employees and friends are on Spotify and had no idea that there was another streaming service out there similar to the market leader. So being a music industry professional I decided to switch over to Spotify and analyze the differences between the two. And here is what I've got so far.

The Similarities:

Both MOG and Spotify have the same amount of music, or fairly close. This is because many artists, labels, and managers use online aggregators to get their music to the market. So, if an album is on MOG, chances are it's on Spotify and vice versa.

They both have multiple tiered account options and are identical in price. In the MOG world you can pay $4.99 per month for unlimited music streaming from your computer and customized radio stations. For $9.99 per month you get all those options plus the ability to download music to your mobile devices to enjoy offline. And when you are on Spotify the options are the same and so are the monthly fees. From a business standpoint there are no competitive differentiations here.

Both services have radio features, customizable playlists, and Facebook integration.

The Differences (and they're not that huge):

MOG has a sexier user interface, especially on their mobile versions. They use less text and more icons to separate user options.

Spotify integrates your playlists across various platforms. As a MOG user, I always hated that my playlist on my computer didn't show up on my iPhone and my iPad. With Spotify, I was psyched to see my playlists update on all devices seamlessly.

MOG has a more customizable radio feature. With MOG you select the artist you want and then click on their "radio" button, from there you move a slider to select only that artist, similar artists, or varying mixes of both. This is much more fun than Spotify, who has you listen to songs and give them a thumbs up or down to customize the playlists.

This is what I have witnessed thus far.  I will continue to use Spotify for now and document the differences between the two services. Right now I am leaning towards Spotify. Even though MOG has a sexier user interface, sharing playlists between devices is huge for me.

What will you do without your own music library?

For years I collected tapes, then CD's, and then digital downloads to build my own personal music collection. When I got hold of a third generation iPod back in 2003 I started to dump all of that music into my iTunes library. Today that library holds about 15,000 tracks.

But over the past year I, like most of you, have switched over from purchasing new music to streaming it through an online music provider. There are many of these services out there. Most notably Spotify, Pandora, and MOG. I choose the later, MOG, and pay about $10 per month so I can download as much music as I want to my fourth generation iPod Touch and iPhone.

Now, I have been pretty impressed with streaming over downloading.  It has allowed me to investigate new music, find new indie bands, and catch up on some old favorites, all without having to drop 99¢ per track or $10 per album. It just seems to make financial sense in these tough economic times.

But with every great idea comes some sort of risk.

I have been following music industry related news for a while now and have noticed two reoccurring themes that trouble me when it comes to my music collection. The first started in October of this year when financial analysts deemed Spotify's business model "unsustainable". You can read the article here.

"In almost a one-for-one scenario, every dollar Spotify is generating immediately exits the company due to licensing fees..."

The second reoccurring theme that is troubling is what is happening right now on Capitol Hill in regards to intellectual property. For months now Pandora has been leading a charge to get Congress to reduce the online royalty payments for artists. It seems investors for the online streaming service need the business to make more money, and they have deemed the best way to do that is by lobbying our Nation's leaders to reduce royalty payments do to the musicians' whose works they are exploiting for profit. Former TuneCore CEO Jeff Prince wrote a great article on this conundrum for Hyperbot. You can get to it here.  

So what do these two themes mean for us streamers?

The answer is simple. The two biggest leaders in the streaming market have been deemed unsustainable. Spotify is surviving through the assistance of venture capital and Pandora is trying to create a stronger business model by challenging the artists they rely on for product. Eventually the venture capitalists backing Spotfiy are going to want out, especially if their forecasts continue to demonstrate they may not get a return on their investment. Investors invest to make money, not for charity. And if Pandora continues to challenge the royalty payments of their artists, those artists are going to stop providing the second giant with product. And if you think musicians need Pandora, just ask Taylor Swift and her management team who proved streaming is a benefit, not a necessity.

This could lead to consumers without a decent streaming service. And for those of us who haven't purchased a CD in months that could lead to thousands of consumers with stale music collections. Imagine what would happen if Spotify and Pandora fell off the map. Sure other companies would take their place. That is the power of capitalism, but consumers would be scared, and chances are they would go back to downloading their favorite music through services such as Amazon and iTunes in record numbers. Maybe Apple and Amazon stock isn't a bad idea at this moment.

Now, I am not saying that streaming will fall off the map, and to be honest I am still streaming over downloading as I write this article, but imagine what would happen if these companies disappeared. How much would you have to charge to your iTunes account in the day after, the week after...the year after?

The Streaming Industrial Radio Revolution

To many historians the terms Industrial Revolution is a misnomer.  Primarily because it actually took many years for our society to evolve from an agrarian based product system to a manufacturing based delivery method.  Due to that name including the term "revolution" we tend to overlook the fact that society spent many years in the middle of an unknown changing marketplace.  Families, employees, and employers did not know that eventually the introduction of steam power, railways, and the combustion engine would fuel a more advanced and wealthier society.

The same holds true in what we are facing in today's music marketplace.  The advent of the Internet has drastically altered the music delivery system and this small ripple has created a wave of change in the business the size of a tsunami.   One of the core components to the past music business marketing plan has been crushed by this wave of change.  That component is called radio.

But I am here to tell you that radio isn't dying or dead. It is only changing and with that change has adopted a new name called "streaming."

  

There seems to be a lot of arguments about the viability of Internet based streaming services such as Spotify, Pandora, and MOG.  Industry insiders claim that these services provide little, if any, revenue for artists, labels and songwriters. They have waged war on these services claiming that they steal download sales from artists and labels.  A few artists and publishers have even pulled, or threatened to pull, their content from some of these services. Most recently Sir Paul McCartney pulled his content to reportedly force consumers to download his music from online retailers such as iTunes and Amazon where he earns a larger amount in royalties. See the article here.

While this may be a great idea for an established musical icon such as Paul McCartney it isn't a wise decision for newer artists.  These services act as a new revolutionized radio model, but unlike traditional radio artists do not need to sell the gatekeepers on the idea of including their songs on the play lists.  Any artist can upload their newest tune or album to any streaming service without having to shell out huge dough in promotion fees to wine and dine programmers to be let in.

What these services offer new artists is the opportunity to engage potential fans with their music for free.  Any fan can sign-up for a free subscription to basically any streaming company and with that subscription they can seek out an artist or album they are interested in and have a no obligation listen to the music.  There is a division in the industry as to if free services produce more download sales. Billboard reports that they do not.  See the article here.  Streaming service Last.fm reports otherwise. See their article here. Regardless of what industry insiders report these streaming services do offer something to new artists when it comes to revenue.

I myself am an active music downloader whom normally uses iTunes, but over the past few years I have become discouraged having to shell of $1.29 for a new tune or $9.99 for a new album just to find out that I didn't like the song or tracks 4, 6, 9, and 10.  It has cost me hundreds in what I consider wasted downloads.  Then last year I decided to try a streaming service on my iPhone.  I downloaded the MOG app and subscribed for their monthly $10 subscription that lets me download tunes to my device for as long as I keep paying my subscription. Since then I have explored many new artists and dozens of new albums.  Thanks to the service I realized how much I liked Adele's 21 and was happy to buy the entire album from iTunes for $10.99. More importantly I was open up to newer artists such as Trivium, Lana Del Ray, and Nada Surf among many others whom I would have avoided dropping $1.29 a track to find out if I liked them or not.  I am one streaming user whom has checked out over 150 new artists thanks to my MOG account. If their music is good and appeals to me chances are I will buy their downloads, go to their shows, and purchase some of their merchandise.  I would have never been opened up to these unknown names without my streaming account. Through the new industrialized radio I have received added benefits and the artists have received added benefits.  Isn't that a core tenement in business? Think about my Adele experience.  She got a streaming royalty from me listening to her album on MOG and a mechanical royalty when I downloaded the album. Before my MOG account she may have just got a royalty on one or two tunes, but thanks to the new radio I was able to experience her entire works without obligation and encouraged to buy her entire album. Your welcome Adele and Columbia Records.

I think it is imperative that those in the industry embrace streaming services. Even if they do not recognize them as the new radio.  They help curb piracy, open up potential fans to new artists, and add more pennies into the artists royalty accounts. To succeed this industry must not challenge Eli's cotton gin, but rather embrace its potential to change the world.