blackrimglasses

Experience.

And what Apple is doing is pretty cool too.

I think the future of recorded music packaging is tantamount to the zip, dmg, rar, etc. It’s codes, logins, and most of all experiences.

The concept of a “drop date” is gone.

The concept of “in stores____” is done.

The whole notion of one day to experience what took a lifetime to create is also gone.

Isn’t it time the experience of an album was in parallel with the experience of making it?

I personally think that alternative platforms open this world up even more, especially when making these experiences on platforms like Drupal. When I was a kid, and I would get very excited about a new release (ie, Smashing Pumpkin’s “Siamese Dream” or Pearl Jam “Vs.” or R.E.M.’s “Automatic for the People,” all of which I obsessed over), to be able to get teasers, clips, videos, etc before release would have been killer.

As it was, I would clip magazines, hunt for clips online, tape the first single’s radio premiere, stay up to watch the video premiere on 120 minutes, etc.

What I miss with the ready-made-ready-action world is that there is no anticipation anymore. Half the gratification of owning something is the anticipation of owning it. The other half is either the purchase or the ownership, depending on your nature.

One of the challenges that faces our business now (actually extends to other businesses too, even blogging) is not only getting people to buy in the face of the abundance of morphologically similar “free,” but how to create experiences that transcend that which could be consumed from the firehose. How do you create that first moment of seeing the video for “Drive” on MTV? Or the first time Animal premiered in the epic Pearl Jam performance in 1993 on the VMA’s? How do you recreate the first spin of Achtung Baby, Nevermind, Surfer Rosa, Different Class…

What I love about music is the excitement of discovery, the anticipation, the visceral experience of listening, of feeling and loosing one’s self in it.

The best thing about technology is that everything at my finger tips, while I sit here on my sofa on a laptop is able to realize that again in abundance, its just a matter of turning the switches in the right way.

Will I ever feel the same sense of passion about music that I did between 1991 and 1993, when it seemed like there was a constant stream of brilliance coming out? I think so. I think Sigur Ros came close with their latest release. I think Radiohead did an amazing job with In Rainbows. I think Trent Reznor is smart. I admire Michael Stipe and the R.E.M, camp trusting us enough to do the same with Accelerate, as well as Metallica.

I see great things ahead. And in world where hacking XMPP and Spread and Flex in concert leads to music experiences….. Well that just makes a music geek smile.

Below: Ninetynights.com and Mission: Metallica, for R.E.M,’s “Accelerate” and Metallica’s “Death Magnetic” respectively.

Every day new content was put up to preview the record. Users bought into the “experience” and also receive a super-high quality digital package of the record on release day. Videos, tracks, “riffs,” in-studio documentary footage, etc. All appeared in here and on MetClub.com first.

Starting on January 1, and picking up where Michael Stipe’s futurepicenter.com left off, every night a clip shot by Vincent Moon was posted as a Flash stream and an HD quicktime file. The next day, the HD file changed, flash streams stayed up. Users were invited to remix and edit the footage and use as a part of Supernatural Superserious’ video site. Songs debuted in these clips, including a memorable week which unveiled a song that wasn’t on the record. February 29th (the “91st night”) featured R.E.M.’s only show played on a Leap Day as a full stream and download.