Rock and Roll and Hyperbole

What's going on

Chris Singleton — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 22:38:18 +0000

Well, I feel like I've neglected my website and blog - and therefore you, dear readers (oh, ok, reader) - a tad of late.

So I just thought I'd add a quick post about some stuff that's been going on / is coming up.

Online gig - 6 December

Firstly, I've got an online gig on 6 December. I'll be previewing some new material, and playing my greatest, er, hits from Lady Gasoline and Twisted City. The gig is free but I will be passing a virtual hat around during it to raise a few bob for the Save the Children charity. To watch it, simply go to http://www.ustream.tv/channel/chris-singleton-live at 8.30pm on 6 December.

For a reminder of the show, just go to http://www.ustream.tv/channel/chris-singleton-live#events and hit the 'Remind me' button.

New(ish) video

In case you missed it, I recently put out a cover of an old Beatles B-Side, Yes It Is, and made a rather odd video to go with it. You can check out the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfwuMt9OF8E (do feel free to share, as ever!).

New album

I'm also in the middle of recording album 3 - it's going a bit slower than usual as I recently became a dad and have been a bit sidetracked! But I'm working with some great musicians on it and very excited about how it's all turning out. It's currently looking as though it will be an artrock concept album extravaganza. Will post some work in progress up as and when it's ready.

Blogging

Finally, I've been blogging a bit for Prescription PR recently, writing articles about music promotion in this weird new-fangled age of the online musician. If you're in a band or just generally interested in that sort of thing, do check it out at http://www.prescriptionmusicpruk.com/the-prescription/

Anyway, that's where I'm at for now.
Talk anon dear reader.

Computer says no: time to fear the algorithm?

Chris Singleton — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 14:29:06 +0000

When you are waiting at a red traffic light at a junction, a little algorithm – a formula or set of steps for solving a particular problem – is silently judging you. It’s working out how long you and other motorists have been waiting at the various sets of lights at the junction, how many pedestrians have pushed a button at a crossing, which road is the most important one, what time of day it is, how quickly you need to pee and so on. Based on these variables and what the algorithm makes of them all, you’ll either be waiting a short or a long time before you can stop cursing, uncross your legs, release the handbrake and move on (assuming, of course, that you’re the sort of person who uses the handbrake. There is a very good reason for using a handbrake whilst waiting at the lights, but that’s another, and perhaps rather boring, blog post).

Algorithms are in the news a lot at the moment, partly because a clever chap called Eli Pariser has written a book called The Filter Bubble about them. Annoyingly, this is a particular interest of mine, and he’s beaten me to writing a tome about it – but in my defence I’m a new dad and finding the time to write a blog post is very tricky, let alone attempting a book. For similar dad-related reasons, I haven’t got round to reading The Filter Bubble, but from what I can gather from reviews and an interesting TED talk he gave recently, Parisier’s focus is on how algorithms are used online. More on that in a moment, but first it’s worth pointing out that algorithms are nothing new – they’ve been around for donkey’s years, and are as much an offline phenomenon as an online one. Healthcare professionals use detailed algorithms to examine symptoms and establish courses of treatment; call centres use them to evaluate your response to certain questions and ascertain what crap to sell you. If you’ve got a Volvo it will probably tell you off for starting the engine without putting your seatbelt on, and if you get in an elevator, it will hopefully take you to a floor which corresponds to the button you press. In their simplest form, algorithms are little flowcharts which ‘process’ a situation – or you. If yes, do this; if no, do that.

All the above examples seem rather mundane – and unless you’re particularly into the electronics in a Volvo, they are. But lately, algorithms have taken on a new importance. As with most things, the internet has sort of ‘turbo-charged’ them: it’s made them (a) more sophisticated and (b) far more prevalent, to the point where it’s virtually impossible to do anything online without encountering an algorithm that is doing its very best to make you take a very particular course of action. You are probably only reading this blog post because Facebook or Google used an algorithm to process you – or your search query – in a very specific way and decided that this article was for you. If you’re reading this in the south of France, you may well be there because when you perused the Ryanair site, it did some sums and thought that offering you a so-called free flight to Nice was a good idea. If you’re staying in a four star hotel in Nice you may be there because when you searched for hotels in the area, an online advertising algorithm pointed you in the direction of a cheap deal on four star hotels in France. Personally, if I was in a four star hotel by the Mediterranean, I wouldn’t be reading a blog post about algorithms, I’d be doing something more interesting, but there you go.

Algorithms helping you get cheap flights seems pretty harmless; a good thing, right? Perhaps, depending on what you make of global warming. However, online algorithms are not just benign little bits of code that help you find stuff you like; they are often rather more sneaky than that. If you use Gmail to read your emails, Google’s algorithms are reading them too, and displaying adverts to you based on the things – however sensitive or confidential – you are discussing in the mail. If on Facebook you casually mention that you are a bloke and list yourself as ‘single’ (yes, I know, as if anyone ever does that casually), you will see a plethora of attractive big-breasted ladies beside your news feed, all enticing you to visit their dating website, where of course all the ladies are as attractive and big-breasted as the girls in the ads. Not that I would know. If you visit an insurance website, a series of algorithms will track your every click and change the content of pages in real time to ensure that you only see the policies you are most likely to buy. If you search for a product on eBay, an algorithm will take note of this, put a ‘cookie’ on your computer (without asking you), and you will see a shedload of adverts for that product when you visit other, completely different websites. This is perhaps why, when I turn on my computer after my partner has been on Ebay, I see countless adverts for Cath Kidson products wherever I go online, and if I’ve been using her laptop, all she will see is guitars.

This is all about personalisation: very big, powerful companies filtering content and showing you stuff based on who they think you are. (And to be fair, they’ve got a pretty good idea. Every time you clicked that little ‘like’ button on Facebook, you told it you are into Ann Summers products, Tom Jones and Pizza Hut. Hence the constant ads for sexy Welsh pizza). It’s not because these companies particularly want to make the web experience better for you – although sometimes, this is a side-effect – they really just want to sell you something. But either way, personalisation algorithms are now being employed on an industrial scale, to the point where to use the internet is to be pushed hard, and in a sophisticated way, in a certain direction. And the interesting – perhaps disturbing thing – is the effect this is having on our worldview and behaviour.

Let’s take a look at worldview: it will come as no surprise to anyone who reads my blog, or has the misfortune to be subjected to my Facebook status updates, that I’m an outspoken pinko-lefty-liberal type. But I’m a tolerant guy, and I have some conservative friends. However, I’m unlikely to ‘like’ their status updates about so-called benefit scroungers or click on links they post to Daily Mail articles. Equally, my conservative friends probably won’t be too keen on my rude status updates about David Cameron or the links to Guardian editorials that I post. However, I am quite likely to click on other people’s left-leaning posts, and my Tory cousins will no doubt hit ‘like’ every time somebody whinges about a mythical gold-plated public sector pension, calls for the return of the death penalty or wants to privatise the NHS.

These kind of social interactions have consequences for Facebook users. This is because the network makes use of an algorithm called ‘Edgerank’ to determine what to display in users’ news feeds. Without going into too much detail, it takes three variables – ‘affinity’, ‘weight’ and ‘time’ – to make a call on what pieces of content are relevant to each Facebook user. With the examples highlighted above, it will conclude that ‘right-wing’ posts are less relevant to me, and that ‘left-wing’ posts are less relevant to my conservative chums. And it will edit them out of our respective news feeds. This is truly a shame, as it means I can’t wind up my conservative friends any more. Rather more importantly, a valuable exchange of ideas is no longer taking place. Despite all the sharing of information and views that Facebook was meant to bring, every time I use it, a piece of maths is effectively hiding content from me. Not just me: 500 million or so Facebook users who are looking to it for information 20 times a day, 365 days a year. And the overwhelming majority of these have no idea at all that Facebook is taking such an active role in deciding what they should see. I’m no social scientist, but I’m sure this kind of filtering of content applied on such a huge scale cannot but have a significant impact on how people see the world.

This algorithmic, personalised filtering is not restricted to social media news feeds. It’s now crept into search results. Up until fairly recently, you could be fairly confident that if both you and your friend searched for Russian brides on Google, and you both lived in the UK, you’d get exactly the same results. However, about a year and a half ago I started noticing – not, I must stress, as a result of searching for Russian brides – that when I searched for the same thing on Google, but in different contexts, that the results were very different. By different contexts I mean searching for the same thing

on more than one computer
when I was logged into my Google account, or when I was not logged into my Google account
after clicking a particular search result
in a different geographical location.

This was a bit of a headache, as at the time I was doing a bit of freelance work involving search engine optimisation for a music site and I kept getting multiple sets of results for the exact same keywords. It turns out that Google had started doing the same thing as Facebook – looking at a whole load of variables relating to me and making assumptions as to what floated my boat, rather than giving me an impartial set of links. In his TED talk, Parisier highlights this filtering extremely effectively, by describing an experiment where he asked a few of his friends to google ‘Egypt’ and send him a screenshot of the results provided by Google. The screenshots all varied enormously – Google had personalised the search results to the nth degree for each of his friends.

It’s worth noting however, that personalisation isn’t restricted entirely to online algorithms written by big powerful corporations; in a sense, we also write our own. Here’s an example of how. These days I mainly read the news on a smartphone. I'm going to come across as very bien-pensant here, and perhaps a bit of a knob, but my two news sources of choice are the BBC and The Guardian – and I "consume" (eughh) news via two apps that I’ve downloaded for my phone. Both these apps let me select exactly what content I want to appear when I open them. So, when I’m reading the news, I’m presented with content to do with politics, comment, technology, music and whatnot – and generally speaking not much fashion, showbiz and sport. But when I used to buy a newspaper, I would read it from start to finish, meaning I was invariably exposed to – and would read – a much wider range of stories. With news apps, even though they don’t use any surreptitious personalisation filters, they subtly encourage users to apply their own personalisation filter. The upshot is arguably a narrower view of what’s going on, despite there generally being more content available to browse.

So should we be worried about all this filtering that’s going on? Yes. Because it means that the internet is changing in a profound way. Traditionally the web has been (justifiably) viewed as a tool that

widens access to information
provides an ‘impartial’ way of sifting through information
increases transparency.

But now, the two major prisms through which people see the online world – arguably Facebook and Google – are throwing the above notions out the window. Facebook is actively restricting what people see in news feeds, based on perceived taste. Google’s results are no longer impartial – they’re personalised. And both services have not been at all transparent about how this filtering is / has been applied, or how to switch personalisation off.

And that’s just Facebook and Google – a multitude of sites are going down the personalisation route. It’s the Next Big Thing on the web. And when it gets to the point that every site you visit is running an algorithm that shows you ‘relevant’ information only after it has checked your IP address, cross-referenced its content with what you searched for on Google recently, examined your Facebook likes, scanned your computer for cookies and checked out that Russian brides website you were perusing the other day, the internet can no longer be considered a 'source' of information. It will be a gatekeeper far, far more powerful than Rupert Murdoch, and one that you can’t haul before parliament – or throw a foam pie at.

The end of the download is nigh

Chris Singleton — Fri, 27 May 2011 16:22:08 +0000

If internet rumours are to be believed, June 6 2011 may possibly be the music industry’s equivalent of “The Rapture” (for those of you who haven’t been on Facebook recently, or have been living in a hole in the New Forest, "The Rapture" was beginning of the end of the world, and was supposed to happen on May 21. Nothing of the sort happened, unless you are reading this on a cloud with Jesus or you are feeling rather hot and can’t concentrate on this article because a devilish imp is poking your bottom with a pitchfork). Of course “The Rapture” turned out to be a damp squib, but June 6 is more likely to live up to its reputation as being a day on which the music industry will change forever.

So what’s happening on June 6? Well, according to a multitude of newspaper articles and blog posts, it’s the date that Apple may unveil their ‘cloud service’ – a system that lets listeners stream music from the web. Now, as the cloud service in question hasn’t been unveiled yet, it’s not clear what form this is initially going to take. It could be that Apple are simply going to offer something similar to Amazon and Google’s new cloud systems, which allow you to upload and stream your music collection on the web, wherever you are.

But frankly, that’s a pretty boring approach, and unlikely to be what Apple’s “cloud offer” will be. If rumours are to believed, Apple have been working hard to secure licensing agreements with the “big four” record companies – Warner Music Group, Sony Music Group, EMI Group and Universal Music Group – which means all this is heading in one direction: a streaming service similar to Spotify’s, where listeners will eventually be able to stream whatever music they like (for a fee, of course).

If Apple does go down this route, it means that an en-masse switch from paid-for downloads to on-demand music streaming is now just around the corner – the rise of 3G web connections, increasing use of smartphones and Apple’s 75%-85% share of the download market would more or less guarantee that streaming becomes the de facto way that music is consumed. If Apple release a software update for iTunes containing streaming functionality, millions of iPod, iPhone and computer users in general all around the world would suddenly be able to stream music instead of paying to download files. The choice of tracks would be vast – significantly bigger than Spotify’s library, due to full music industry buy-in – and the reach of the service would be enormous too, thanks to Apple’s strong global position in both the download and mobile device markets. All this would arguably result in death of the download, and pretty quickly too.

What would be the impact of this on musicians? Well, for bands who are signed to a label and getting a significant marketing push, it would be fairly good news – it makes their music even easier to access. For musicians without a budget however, it would represent more of a headache. This is because streaming removes the attractiveness of a key tool used by musicians to entice people to sign up to email updates: the free download. For several years now, indie musicians with any clue whatsoever have been giving away downloads in exchange for the ability to communicate with fans online – with individual tracks, EPs or even albums being swapped for email addresses or Facebook ‘likes’. However, there is not much of an incentive for a potential fan to grab a free download from a band if a) they don’t really download music anymore and b) the track can be streamed anyway on iTunes.

The free-download-for-email-address scenario that we’ve seen over the past few years has led to a situation where clued-up independent musicians have, to a certain extent, been able to bypass traditional gatekeepers – labels, journalists, distributors, promoters and radio stations – yet still make quite respectable amounts of money from music via direct-to-fan sales. Perhaps it’s a negative way of looking at things, but with downloads diminished as an incentive for joining a mailing list, indie musicians will be able to communicate directly with fewer and fewer listeners online; so ironically, technological advancement may lead us back full circle to a situation whereby only those with serious budgets can introduce consumers to new music - and create any demand for it.

But if you are an indie musician who has built a business model on free downloads, and all this does sound like the end of the world, don’t despair yet. Pretty much every technological development in the music industry has shut one door only to open another; and with all these developments, the trick is to stay ahead of the curve. The musicians who twigged that free downloads helped build databases first built the biggest databases (and sold the most music and merchandise); and it will be the musicians who twig how best to use streaming cleverly who will monetise the new landscape. The trick is to think fast. But the end of the download is nigh – get ready.

I originally wrote this article for Prescription PR, who are a great indie music PR company based in Cambridge; musicians in need of publicity, check 'em out.

Soundcloud goodies

Chris Singleton — Wed, 18 May 2011 19:48:07 +0000

A quick note to let you know that I'm trying to move with the times online - a near-impossible feat given how many new music-sharing, video-sharing, sock-sharing, wife-swapping and other sorts of sharing sites appear on the net every week.

Anyway I've done something which I've been meaning to do for a while, and that's join Soundcloud. I've admired it from afar for a bit, but just have been too bloody busy to set up a profile. But I've finally got round to it and you can listen to some stuff over at http://soundcloud.com/chrissingleton. Amongst the 9 uploads currently on my profile, there are 3 free downloads available - two podcasts (about 'Lady Gasoline' and 'Twisted City') and a track called 'Somebody's Shoes' - an acoustic number I recorded back in the early naughties (God, that makes me sound old). You'll also be able to stream some 'Lady Gasoline' songs.

Anyway, enjoy the profile. As the weeks go by I'll be using it to whack up demos of new material. If you're on Soundcloud, do follow me and whatnot; I'd be very grateful. I might even follow you back, if you're not an interent weirdo who wants to swap a wife or share a sock.

More Chris Singleton content

The Alternative March for the Alternative

Chris Singleton — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 20:15:27 +0000

On Sunday, we stopped at some services just off the M1 where I bought a bottle of Sprite. Whilst paying for this overpriced but - due to a rather bad hangover - much needed fizzy liquid I took a quick glance at the shop's rack of Sunday papers.

Unsurprisingly, most of the front pages were covering the 'March for the Alternative', the anti-cuts protest which saw 250,000 or 500,000 people (depending on whether you believe the Police or the protest's organisers) march through Central London in protest against the very deep cuts to public services.

I was one of those protestors, and although I have a large beard at the moment, it is more by accident than design, so before you ask I am not a hippy, a trade union member, a communist, an anarchist or even in Red Ed's Labour Party. I will possibly own up to being a beardy weirdy, circa 1969-71, but that's probably more to do with taste in music than politics and the look I'm going for with my next record. Mainly I was there because like a lot of dudes, bearded or no, I'm quite fond of British public services.

Anyway, enough of the beard stuff. Where was I? Oh yes, in a service station, bottle of Sprite in hand, hungover and looking at examples of fine British journalism. I was expecting the papers to cover the march in a negative light - but I really wasn't expecting there to be quite such a disparity between what actually happened on Saturday and what was being reported. I and the other 249,999 or so peaceful protestors might as well have been on another march, on another planet; certainly not at the event that was being written about on the front pages of virtually every one of the respectable British newspapers I was looking at (if that's a correct way of describing them; last time I looked most British newspapers seemed to be owned by foreign, rich, eccentric tycoons, but that's another day's moan).

The event that the press was portraying was one of anarchy; violence; chaos; war. Yes, there was some violence, for which 149 people were charged. That is, on the Police figures, 0.06% of the total turnout, or, based on the organisers' figures, 0.03%. Either way it would appear that 99.94% to 99.97% of those protesting were not charged with any wrong-doing or violence. It was an overwhelmingly peaceful protest, and all of us aforementioned peaceful people were angry - in a peaceful way of course - that some idiots had disturbed our, well, peacefulness.

Maybe it was too much to expect that a paper of record, The Sunday Times, might make more of the fact that hundreds of thousands of British people from all walks of life came out to protest against their own government than that a profoundly small minority caused violence. Or that so-called 'quality broadsheets' would focus exclusively on 'carnage', 'battles', 'chaos', 'violence' and accompany these lurid descriptions with pictures of an unruly but entirely unrepresentative mob. What was being reported was not the 'March for the Alternative', but some weird 'Alternative March for the Alternative', completely at odds with reality.

But whilst I was irritated by most of the coverage, one front page actually made me feel genuinely sad. The Sunday Telegraph had a huge picture of a policeman being attacked by some guy with a stick, accompanied by the headline 'Britain's Face of Hatred'.

This picture and headline instantly and deeply undermined up to half a million people, from all sections of British society, from all age groups and from all backgrounds, who had come together and marched not out of hatred but in support of an idea that is arguably the polar opposite of hatred: the idea that we are, to coin a phrase, 'all in this together'; that public services matter; that they transform lives for the better; and that they should not be slated, sacrificed and privatised because of the huge greed of the banking sector. Even if we who were marching in support of public services are profoundly misguided, and the controversial austerity measures are going to eventually solve all of Britain's economic problems, we were not remotely marching out of hate; we genuinely believe that public services are a force for good that make lives better for millions - and that every step should be taken to protect them and fund them properly. Idealistic, perhaps, but not hateful.

The Sunday Telegraph's front page will have been seen by countless other hungover guys in motorway services all across Britain. Or people popping to the corner shop for a pint of milk. And for millions this in-your-face, out-of-context image will give a lasting impression that the March for the Alternative was a march for hatred. But it's not how the event was, or what it was about.

I took another snap of the 'March for the Alternative'. It's unlikely to be seen on the front page of a newspaper; it will probably go no further than the little band of devoted and perhaps unfortunate readers who read my scribblings. But it's a picture which tells the story of the day in a much more honest way, and shows what it was about. You can take a look below.

More Chris Singleton content

The making of 'Lady Gasoline'

Chris Singleton — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 20:01:20 +0000

A quick note to let you know that a 'mini-documentary' is now available about the making of my current record, 'Lady Gasoline'. It feels a bit portentious and pretentious to have a documentary made about the album, but this is the age of an internet free-for-all so I thought: why the hell not.

In any event the documentary gives you an opportunity to have a listen to a lot of music from the record and find out how and why it was made. Hope you enjoy it.

You can view it at http://www.youtube.com/user/chrissingletonmusic#p/u/0/Qh0eYp84Hr4 or, if you're reading this in the right online context (!), stream it below.

On rock critics

Chris Singleton — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 18:38:16 +0000

For musicians, facing the rock critics is always one of the most daunting and perplexing aspects of putting out an album. Daunting because of the fear of rejection; perplexing because of the multiple responses from critics to the same music.

It was a particularly baffling experience encountering the reaction to my current album, Lady Gasoline. A critic from The Irish Times thought the album was rubbish, focusing as much on my hearing problem (or as she put it, ‘angle’), hyperacusis, as the music; two days later the Sunday Business Post critic remarked that my hearing condition was completely irrelevant and the album was a complete triumph. Q Magazine applauded the record's stylistic diversity at the same time that Gaydar Nation bemoaned its wearing of copious influences on its sleeve; industry bible Music Week approved of the album's production values while some at BBC Radio 2 found fault with them. Dubliner Magazine loved the ELO references that pop up on the record; certain hip music bloggers definitely didn't, being far too cool (or perhaps young) to appreciate anything to do with Mr Jeff Lynne. And some of the lazier critics or bloggers just printed my press release verbatim (in which case the album was naturally the greatest thing since sliced bread – result!).

Whilst I obviously cut out all the positive reviews – to show our soon-to-arrive baby how fantastic a musician his/her father was when he still had time to do that sort of thing – and consigned the poor ones to the dustbin of rock history, I couldn't really ascertain from either set of reviews how good or bad the album was. I was left with the sense that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, one man's meat is another man's poison, it’s a very postmodern world we live in and so on.

Reading all the reviews got me thinking about rock criticism though, and the relationship between those who produce music and those who write about it. This relationship is a fascinating, symbiotic, love-hate affair.

It’s symbiotic because both groups currently rely heavily on each other for their jobs. A simple take on the situation is this: with no music produced, the critics have nothing to review (and no music magazine/supplement sales); with no reviews, the artists have no exposure (and no album sales). It’s a love-hate affair because critics love or hate the output of musicians, and musicians love or hate the reaction of the critics.

It gets more fun than this though, because another layer of criticism can also kick in – when the musicians start to become critics of the critics. From my scouring of the rock press for reviews of Twisted City and Lady Gasoline, I’ve noticed that some music critics can simply write better prose than others; some have a greater knowledge of rock history than others; some are more familiar with how recording works than others; some only like stuff that sounds like Radiohead’s Kid A; some are clearly straight out of college. You can spot the more informed critics from the charlatans a mile off, and you start to judge their output accordingly. In the circle of musicians I move in, conversations about the quality of the various rock critics’ output crop up time and again. It sounds daft, doesn’t it: musicians hanging around rehearsal studios, engaging in metacritcism.

The other thing I’ve noticed about rock critics is that just like the musicians they review, they jostle and compete with each other for attention. At best, this leads to some hilarious crimes against the English language being committed; at worst, it leads to some critics being cruelly dismissive of albums just to make a name for themselves. There is a constant – albeit understandable – struggle going on amongst rock critics to establish themselves as the most acerbic / wittiest / able-to-use-flowery-words scribe on the block; but we musicians are sometimes the unwitting casualty of this. The battle for rock critic supremacy and reputation means that music is often not judged on its own terms but on the basis of how cool the critic will look if s/he gives it a thumbs up or not.

For me, the best rock critics are the ones who invest energy in understanding how music is made and explaining this to readers. The late Ian MacDonald – who penned the authoritative Revolution in the Head tome about the Beatles – was particularly good at this. He was meticulous in explaining how melody structures, chord selections, key changes and close or open harmonies affect emotional responses to music; he also brought explanations of production techniques into his reviews, showing how compression or equalisation bring tracks to life – or not. Most critics can impart opinions, and some do so very clearly and wittily, but very few seem to want to go near the actual nuts and bolts of how the music is actually made and operates on listeners – possibly because they simply don’t understand this area. A shame, since it’s the combination of all these nuts and bolts which ultimately make a listener fall in love with music.

Whatever about musicians’ views on critics and critics’ views on music, the relationship that I’ve described above between both groups is going to change massively; and predictably, this is down to the internet. On one level, thanks to digital technology, there is now far more content to review (recording and distributing music is now easier than ever) and far more people to review it (in the form of online journalists, bloggers and armchair critics). However, due to the web’s decimation of both newspaper and album sales, we may in time see the end of both professional recording musicians and reviewers – or at the very least, a massive decline in their numbers. This will mean that the relationship between both groups becomes less symbiotic, as recorded music and reviews of it cease to be mutually essential for income generation.

Perhaps this lack of reliance on critics for (non-existent) album sales will lead to more outspoken attacks by musicians on their reviews – such as the hilarious (but in some respects, arguably justified) reaction by Chris de Burgh to a dismissive Irish Times write-up. And maybe rock critics will become even more honest about musicians’ output, not having to worry about keeping (non-existent) record labels and advertisers sweet.

Either way, we musicians will no doubt continue to dismiss rock critics as irrelevant and say it’s the audience's views that matters. Unless, of course, it’s a good review we’re talking about, in which case we’ll slap a nice juicy quote from you on the next press release, thank you very much.

More Chris Singleton content

Some gigs...

Chris Singleton — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 11:15:43 +0000

A wee update for you on the Chris Singleton gigs situation. Over the next few weeks I've got some pretty good ones coming up.

LONDON, 23 SEPTEMBER
Firstly, I'm doing a full-band show in London on 23 September in the heart of Soho - Peter Parker's Rock and Roll Club. Advance booking is cheaper and strongly recommended - get full details and your ticket at http://www.stubmatic.com/chrissingleton/event/5730.

DUBLIN, 1 OCTOBER
I'm playing a show in Whelan's on 1 October. A unique opportunity to see a full-band show in Ireland, so don't miss out - get full details and tickets at http://www.stubmatic.com/chrissingleton/event/5374.

ONLINE, 12 OCTOBER: LADY GASOLINE LIVE ONLINE
No matter where you live, you can watch 'Lady Gasoline Live' - a live online gig where I'll be playing the whole new album from start to finish, live. Just tune into http://www.ustream.tv/channel/chris-singleton-live at 8pm (GMT) on 12 October to watch it. The performance is free.

ONLINE, 19 OCTOBER: TWISTED CITY LIVE ONLINE
I'll be playing all of 'Twisted City' from start to finish online too, on 19 October at 8pm (GMT). Just tune in to http://www.ustream.tv/channel/chris-singleton-live to watch it. The performance is free.

More Chris Singleton content

Chris Singleton TV

Chris Singleton — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 23:02:59 +0000

Well, the new-fangled internet revolution continues. I was given a good tip by Nerina Pallot's husband recently, the very helpful and talented Andy Chatterly - he said to give Ustream a whirl; that it was ideal for live online performances.

So I duly did - I had a 'Twisted Tuesday' show tonight, where I played tracks from my first record, 'Twisted City', to a small group of people. It wasn't the most polished performance ever (my guitar was pretty out of tune, sorry about that) but it was enormous fun. Because of the chatroom functionality that accompanies the video stream, I was able to answer questions from listeners about the songs, do requests and so on. It was a very odd but pleasant experience.

Anyway, I'm going to try to take the concept a bit further. Over the next few weeks, I'm going to play the whole 'Lady Gasoline' album live on Ustream. I'd love you to be there; it all kicks off on 2 August at 8pm at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/chris-singleton-live. I'll be playing 4 tracks from 'Lady Gasoline' plus one from 'Twisted City' - we can have a straw poll on which one. If you're on Facebook, you can get a reminder etc. by going to http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=140541452633455&ref=ts and clicking the "I'm attending" link.

See you on er, telly.

More Chris Singleton content

Promoting music online - top tips for bands and musicians

Chris Singleton — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 10:43:59 +0000

What fascinates me about the relationship between rock and roll and the internet is this: it is now possible for artists to have profitable music careers which take place mainly - or exclusively - online.

Using the net, bands can now conduct significant PR and marketing campaigns, organise global distribution, get airplay, sell merchandise and even do virtual gigs. Things that used to be the preserve of signed acts are now, thanks to the internet, real possibilities for independent artists. And as CDs disappear and record companies go bust, the idea of an 'online career' is not just an option for musicians - it may come to be the only option.

Despite the power of the internet, using it effectively is not as straightforward as bands like to think: it's not cost-free, and it involves a lot of work. But there are a lot of tools - many of them free - to help you, and in this blog post I thought I'd share some of the best ones I've found. You should find them extremely useful.

Getresponse - allows you to capture data and send e-newsletters to fans (automated if you like).
Stubmatic - allows you to sell tickets for your gigs and events, using Paypal.
Ping - a tool that allows you to update multiple social media profiles at once, either online or just by sending an SMS to a number.
Tweetdeck - another tool that allows you to simplify how you update a bunch of social networks in one go.
Tweet for a Track - really simple way of distributing music in exchange for an email address and a tweet.
Feedburner - a tool which lets people subscribe to your blog via email and in a host of readers. Doubles up as a simple way to capture email addresses and send newsletters.
Google Analytics - no band website is complete without Google Analytics installed on it. It gives you vital insights into how people are finding your music online.
Screen-resolution.com - lets you check how your website looks in a wide range of screen resolutions. This sounds boring, but it's actually incredibly useful and important.

Hope these help you in your quest for rock and roll stardom.

More Chris Singleton content