Column 355 – Final Score: A Look Back at the 2011 Music Predictions

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Because many of you (most of you) center your lives around my annual music predictions (and why wouldn’t you?) I’m starting the process early this year by scoring last year’s predictions. Look, if I haven’t got it right yet, I’m not going to in the next two weeks (Hang in there, Courtney). So with that, let the scoring begin:

2011 Music Prediction: Apple will announce that iTunes now lives “in the cloud.” All your iTunes music will be available on any Mac, PC or iPhone/iPod with 3G/4G or Wi-Fi connectivity.

Reality: It’s called iCloud.

2011 Prediction: Music no longer will be sold in units, but in subscription format — all the music in the world on your speakers or earbuds for just $10 a month.

Reality: Say hello to Spotify.

2011 Prediction: This new music subscription format will mark the end of illegal downloading.

Reality: Too early to say, but one recent report said that in Sweden, the number of Spotify users surpassed the number illegal music downloaders in a mere three months after the service was launched.

2011 Prediction: Artists no longer will be paid based on album or singles’ sales, but on how often online services play their music. Record “labels” will become full-time promotion companies whose goal is to get their artists’ music streamed as much as possible.

Reality: The dream of CD revenues hasn’t lost its luster.

2011 Prediction: Publishing rights fees paid for music used in TV commercials or movies and TV will dry up. Instead, artists will begin to pay producers to get their music used in commercials and movies just to gain exposure.

Reality: It ain’t happening…yet.

2011 Prediction: The death of terrestrial radio as a music promotion tool will mean the rebirth of music videos.

Reality: Despite a lack of television or cable outlets (MTV died as a music channel years ago) more bands are making videos than ever, thanks to grassroots production companies like our own Love Drunk and Ingrained studios providing content to Vimeo and YouTube.

2011 Prediction: Big-league commercial artists will post their playlists online or in Rolling Stone to spotlight new or unknown artists.

Reality: Unfortunately, that ain’t happening.

2011 Prediction: CD prices will drop below $10, resulting in a brief resurgence in record stores. However, the audience for cheap CDs is dying off, literally. And the last kick in the crotch will be when automakers quit offering CD players as standard equipment.

Reality: CDs dropped in price, but not that much; and carmakers continue to offer CD players, though autos are becoming more 3G/4G connected. Watch out.

2011 Prediction: Artists we’ll be talking about this time next year: Bright Eyes, Deathcab for Cutie, Justin Timberlake, U2, Cat Power, Beastie Boys, Madonna, Tilly and the Wall, Decemberists, Commander Venus, Noah’s Ark Was a Spaceship, Dismemberment Plan, Beck, Radiohead, Animal Collective, Conduits and Grasshopper Takeover.

Reality: About 50/50 correct. We’re still waiting for those Commander Venus and Grasshopper Takeover reunions.

2011 Prediction: Artists we won’t be talking about next year: Lady Gaga, Kanye, Eminem, Ke$ha, Susan Boyle, Arcade Fire, The Beatles, Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Bruno Mars, M.I.A., Wavves, Best Coast, The National, Sleigh Bells, Vampire Weekend, Sufjan Stevens and The Faint.

Reality: Direct miss.

2011 Prediction: All of Courtney Love’s problems will be solved once and for all.

Reality: She’s still kicking.

2011 Prediction: The Red Sky Music Festival’s ticket sales will fall below their projected target in its first year.

Reality: It’s safe to say that the festival was a financial (and artistic) disappointment, but it’ll be back in 2012.

2011 Prediction: MAHA will take fewer chances for fear of messing up all the good it accomplished in 2010, and ticket sales will suffer.

Reality: Though a solid line-up (headlined by GBV), it wasn’t very risky, and ticket sales were flat compared to 2010.

2011 Prediction: With the surge of local online music news outlets, a couple will fail to catch traction and will quit updating content. One will emerge as the true winner.

Reality: Hearnebraska.org, Omahype.com and TheReader.com are boiling to the top, while old-timer slamomaha.com continues to decline.

2011 Prediction: At least one local over-the-air radio station will commit to a CMJ-style indie rock format.

Reality: Uh, no.

2011 Prediction: Another long-time local music venue will be gobbled up by a developer.

Reality: O’Leaver’s will outlive us all.

2011 Prediction: Homer’s Records will have one of its best years in recent memory and will consider opening a new storefront in Benson.

Reality: The Homer’s chain was reduced to a single storefront in ’11.

2011 Prediction: Saddle Creek Records will add another local band to its roster.

Reality: In fact, the Creek passed on two of the city’s hottest acts – So-So Sailors and Conduits.

2011 Prediction: Another band will emerge from Linoma and attract national attention, and it won’t be a Saddle Creek act.

Reality: Can we count Emphatic?

2011 Prediction: An enterprising young local businessperson will launch a new subscription-based vinyl records club, like Grapefruit Records.

Reality: No subscription label, but Rainy Road and Doom Town emerged as new vinyl playas.

2011 Prediction: A new band will emerge consisting of the progeny of members of a classic local ’90s-era band.

Reality: What about Omaha Girls Rock!?

2011 Prediction: A new live music venues will open along Maple Street in Benson. Another will open as the first serious live music venue west of 72nd Street since The Ranch Bowl.

2011 Prediction: The City of Omaha will get behind the return of a “youth concert” in Memorial Park.

2011 Prediction:  Lady Gaga will return to Nebraska, for her wedding.

2011 Prediction:  Bright Eyes will get nominated for a Grammy.

No, no, no and no. So the final count (by my skewed math) is around 11 for 25. Not, uh, good. But check back in three years and see how many come true. And look for my 2012 predictions in a couple weeks.

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Other than maybe the first night, tonight’s episode of Gus & Call’s December residency at Slowdown Jr. may be the best lineup with the biggest draw. Each night of the residency has a theme, and tonight’s is “Light It Up” — make of that what you will. It features a return of two Saddle Creek Records bands that haven’t been on an Omaha stage in a long time. Lincoln act UUVVWWZ sort of disappeared after Creek re-released their debut album (which first appeared on Darren Keen’s It Are Good Records) back in 2009. I’m told that they’ve been writing new material and performing it on Lincoln stages. Now us lowly Omahans will get a chance to hear it.

Also on tonight’s bill is the return of Ladyfinger, who have been kind of dormant since frontman Chris Machmuller began focusing on his other band, So-So Sailors. Who knows what Ladyfinger will unveil tonight. Also on the bill, of course, is Gus & Call, and apparently there will be some comedy as well. With a lot of us having tomorrow off, this one could be huge, folks. $7, 9 p.m. Be there.

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2011 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Column 306: Backyard Notions
Visions of 2011, Pt. 3

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

These “predictions” have dragged on long enough. In my defense, other than complaints about live reviews, I get more feedback about my annual predictions column(s) than anything I write. People just love being told what’s going to happen (or maybe they love being told what to do). Just to be clear: There is no “insider information” being let slip below; no rumor or innuendo being repeated. These visions are pure hocus-pocus; absolute hunches fueled by coffee and fatigue and all those annoying voices arguing inside my head. Do with them what you will.

This final chapter will explain what will happen in the local music scene in 2011. Read on, if you dare…

— Omaha’s festival season gets a lot more crowded with MECA’s mega orgy of music, the Red Sky Music Festival to be held at the TD Ameritrade baseball stadium. In its first year, ticket sales will fall below their projected target as MECA realizes no one is interested in dropping big bucks for the 6-day ride pass, and even fewer want limited-access tickets to the B- and C-list bands playing outside the stadium. Disappointing ticket sales will cause the Red Sky/MECA/Live Nation team to rethink its booking approach. Look for even more mainstream (i.e., country, jam, bland pop) acts lined up for 2012.

— In a year when it needs to differentiate itself from the Red Sky and other outdoor music events, MAHA will take fewer chances than last year for fear of messing up all the good it accomplished in 2010. Instead of forking over big bucks for major indie stars (i.e., Arcade Fire), they’ll go for an easy-access, locally grown act, and ticket sales will suffer. The good news: It’ll wake up organizers and force even riskier behavior in 2012, including the realization that the answer isn’t going to be found at Lewis & Clark Landing, but at a baseball stadium of their own.

— The local interwebs are going to get mighty crowded in ’11, but the fact is, Linoma’s small handful of local music fans don’t need seven or eight different “one-stop-shop” music resources to figure out what to do on Friday nights. Watch as a couple of the online outlets fail to catch traction with readers and lose interest in updating their content, beginning that slow, familiar slide into “404 Not Found” obscurity. Meanwhile, one website will emerge as the true winner of an online war where victory is counted in clicks rather than dollars.

— In a completely unexpected turn, at one least one local over-the-air radio station will take the plunge and commit to a “new music” college format that includes CMJ-caliber indie rock in regular rotation. And it won’t be The River.

— Get those Facebook protest pages ready. Another long-running local music venue will be in danger of being gobbled up by a developer. Can anyone save this lovable dump?

— Despite all the doom and gloom talk about the end of the Compact Disc, Homer’s Records will have one of its best years in recent memory in ’11, and will consider opening a new storefront in Benson.

— Riding high on the new Bright Eyes release and a resurgence of interest in The Mynabirds, Saddle Creek Records will add yet another local band to its roster. Their choice will surprise no one who follows the local music scene.

— I know I say it every year, but this time I mean it: Another band will emerge from Linoma and attract national attention, and it won’t be a Saddle Creek act. Could Nebraska become the next capital of the punk music world?

— Speaking of record labels, watch as another enterprising young businessman comes out of nowhere and launches a new subscription-based vinyl records club like Simon Joyner’s Grapefruit Records, but with a focus on 7-inch singles a la the Sub Pop Singles Club. Sign me up!

— With every other influential old-school local indie band reuniting over the past couple of years, one more will take the stage in ’11, if only for one song. Better dig that guitar out of the closet, Mr. Nansel.

— A new band will add a unique twist to the recent rage over classic ’90s-era rock as its members will consist of musicians who are the progeny of members of one of those classic ’90s-era bands — literally representing the next generation of Nebraska rock.

— Two new live music venues will open in Omaha in ’11. One will be located along an already crowded Maple Street in Benson (and I’m not talking about The Hole). The other will be the first live music venue west of 72nd Street to book serious local and touring indie bands since the good ol’ Ranch Bowl met a wrecking ball.

— Emerging from the bloody carnage of the winter recall election — and flying in the face of record deficits — the City of Omaha will get behind the return of a “youth concert” in Memorial Park that was left bending in the wind during the Suttle administration.

— Lady Gaga will return to Nebraska, and this time she’ll be wearing a pork-chop dress (because pork is the other “white” meat. Get it? Wearing white? GET IT? All right, all right, it’s a stretch)..

— Bright Eyes will once again be nominated for a Grammy, but this time it’ll be for their music. And (surprise) they’ll win.

* * *

Enough!

Like watching the final episode of an Omaha version of Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew but done in reverse, tonight is the final evening of Con Dios’ boozy residency at the house of pain we call O’Leaver’s. Barring any personal catastrophes, I, too, will be on hand, along with 100 others, to wish our heroes farewell and good luck as they leave behind a womb littered with spent PBR cans and dirty looks to go out into a scary world and make a name for themselves. Goodbye, Con Dios, and god speed. Opening the show will be O’Leaver’s lifers So-So Sailors (a band destined for great things, you heard it here first on K-TIM). This is must-see TV. Tonight, 9:30 p.m., $5.

Also tonight, Matt Whipkey and his band, The Whipkey Three, will be opening a show at The Waiting Room, along with the rootsy, bluesy, Americana genius of Lincoln’s Son of 76 and the Watchmen, for headliner Voodoo Method. $5, 9 p.m.

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2011 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Column 305: Dangerous Visions

Music predictions for 2011, Pt. 2.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

I’m not saying that all of the following visions will happen in 2011, but the ball will start rolling next year that will cause the walls of the music industry to finally come tumbling down. It may take years, but it’ll happen sooner than anyone (except me, of course) expects. Here’s how it’ll go down:

— As you read this, everyone will be talking about the new Verizon iPhone; and the talk of 2010 was the iPad. But the big news in 2011 will be when Apple announces that iTunes now lives “in the cloud.” What that means is that all of your music in iTunes on your PC or Mac, as well as all of everyone else’s music, will be available on any PC or iPhone/iPod with 3G/4G or Wi-Fi connectivity. And that includes in your car (with a new 3G/4G-accessible car stereo).

Apple’s purchase of lala.com helped make “music in the cloud” possible, along with Apple’s enormous capital investments in massive server farms. Add to that a technological breakthrough that results in a quantum improvement in file compression that will make near-CD-quality music files available via streaming, and you’re seeing the beginning of the end of the Compact Disc. It also could signal the demise of the traditional album format as we know it, since music no longer will be sold in units, but in a subscription format — all the music in the world on your speakers or earbuds for just $10 a month.

— iTunes “in the cloud” and this new subscription format also will mark the end of illegal downloading — what would be the point?

— Picking up on the Pandora model, artists will no longer be paid based on album or singles’ sales, but on how often their music gets played in iTunes. Record labels will turn into full-time promotion companies, whose goal is to get their artists’ music listened to in iTunes as much as possible.

— Pandora, Grooveshark, Rhapsody and all the other streaming services will see the writing on the wall and will file anti-trust suits against Apple, who will argue that competition exists in the form of other media, such as radio and television, and other stream-tech companies such as Google and Microsoft. The glacial speed of the legal system will cause the case to drag on for years, long enough to put Apple’s streaming competitors out of business.

— The old standby revenue stream known as “publishing rights” — artists getting paid to have their music used in TV commercials or movies and TV — will dry up. Suddenly artists will be willing to pay whatever is necessary to get their music used in commercials and movies. “Selling out” becomes known as “buying out.”

— iTunes “in the cloud” will become the boot on the throat of the radio industry. But without radio, how will new bands capture the attention of an audience outside of their home towns (as if they could depend on radio before)? We will welcome a rebirth in the importance of music videos, but this time making a video will have nothing to do with art or music. A 3-minute clip of your band performing its song on YouTube just ain’t gonna cut it. Instead, it’s all about “going viral,” and that means filming something that no one has seen before. Expect to see videos that push the envelope not only of good taste, but of human experience. For the first time, we’ll see a band member get killed while making a video. And it’ll be a monster hit.

— Another way to get your music noticed — get the stars to talk about it. Having your band name-checked on Kanye’s playlist already is an effective tool for young bands. Soon all the big-league commercial artists will post their playlists online or in Rolling Stone, effectively putting a spotlight on unknown artists. But be wary, it’ll only be a matter of time before those greedy bastards start taking money to include bands on their playlists (if they don’t already).

— With this quantum change in how we listen to music just around the corner, old-school record industry execs will make one last-gasp attempt at keeping as much market as possible by finally dropping CD prices below $10 a unit for all content (not just “sale items”). Some CDs will be as cheap as $5.99. This price drop will result in a brief resurgence of record stores — Homer’s might even consider expanding its world-wide chain of stores to three. But it’s too little too late. The audience for cheap CDs is dying off, literally. And the last kick in the crotch will be when automakers quit offering pre-installed CD players in their cars.

The scariest part about all of these visions — the same thing will happen to the movie and book-publishing industries.

Keeping with tradition, I can’t leave out these 2011 predictions:

— Artists we’ll be talking about this time next year: Bright Eyes, Deathcab for Cutie, Justin Timberlake, U2, Cat Power, Beastie Boys, Madonna, Tilly and the Wall, Decemberists, Commander Venus, Noah’s Ark Was a Spaceship, Dismemberment Plan, Beck, Radiohead, Animal Collective, Conduits and Grasshopper Takeover.

— Artists we won’t be talking about next year: Lady Gaga, Kanye, Eminem, Ke$ha, Susan Boyle, Arcade Fire, The Beatles, Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Bruno Mars, M.I.A., Wavves, Best Coast, The National, Sleigh Bells, Vampire Weekend, Sufjan Stevens and The Faint.

— And finally, all of Courtney Love’s problems will be solved once and for all.

So what will happen in the local music scene in 2011? Find out next week in the third and final chapter of the 2011 Predictions!

* * *

Spoon’s Britt Daniel recalled his brief time with Jay Reatard, just a few weeks before Jay’s death, in this item on spinner.com. Among the comments, Daniel recalls first learning about Reatard’s music. “I remember looking at a bunch of the live videos online and feeling like … I don’t know. That’s not how I usually learn about music. I remember for some reason being really turned on by looking at these live videos. It just felt like really great pop songs with a sort of very odd Midwestern punk sensibility to it.” An interesting read that helps keep Reatard’s memory alive.

* * *

Con Dios continues its brief three-week residency tonight at O’Leaver’s. Tonight’s special guest is Slumber Party Records artist Bear Country. And then there’s the $1 bottles of PBR (When are they ever gonna put Rolling Rock on special? Just imagine the response!). 9:30, $5. Need more reason? King Coffey has a review of last week’s Con Dios show in today’s OWH Go! (read it here).

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Lazy-i Best of 2010

Tick, tick frickin’ tick. That’s the sound of time running out on those of you who are thinking of entering this year’s drawing for a copy of the Lazy-i Best of 2010 sampler. Better get to sending your e-mail to tim@lazy-i.com with your name and mailing address. Tracks include songs by Arcade Fire, Jenny and Johnny, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, Belle and Sebastian, Titus Andronicus, The Mynabirds, A Weather, Zeus, The Black Keys, Pete Yorn and more. Full track listing is here. If you’re lucky enough to win, you’ll also get the new limited edition Lazy-i Sticker to stick on something. Deadline is next Tuesday, Jan. 18. Better get on it most ricky-tick.

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2011 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.