NOW That’s What I Call Mundane!

If you're new here, you might wanna check our FAQ. The surefire way to stay up to date is to subscribe to our RSS feed, or get the latest updates from the Lab in your Email. Thanks for visiting Burst Labs!

In a world where a collection of songs that have been marauding your ears on the radio every hour on the hour for 6 months can be loaded into a caulking gun and ejaculated onto a compact disc only to dominate the billboard charts - think “Hannah Montana covers High School Musical: Featuring Gwen Stefani” - I suppose anything is possible.

But I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around “This Is Next”. Essentially a “NOW That’s What I Call Music!” for the hipster set, “This Is Next” aims to market acts like M. Ward, Of Montreal, and Deerhoof to a larger audience through big-box retailers like Wal-Mart.

Understand that my issue is not with the “make a buck” ethos. I get the point of selling records, and if a great but little-known artist like Ted Leo gains a bit more exposure and moves a few more units, great.

My issue is that I don’t see how it will work. Mainstream pop music and indie rock are two very different animals. The reason that “NOW…” is so successful is that it rightly understood that radio pop consumers just want the hits and didn’t want to pay 17 bucks for 2 hits and filler. Pop music is marketed that way from its inception - barrage their ears until they buy the record.

Now, without getting on a “good indie music vs. bad radio music” jag, the clientele is different. Indie music exists because it’s different from radio music (otherwise it would be on the radio). Being that it’s different, it attracts a different kind of listener. Someone that is into a band like Deerhoof has probably already heard the record, and if they haven’t, I have a hard time seeing them go to Wal-Mart to get it instead of iTunes, or Amazon, or their local record store. Hell they’re going to illegally download it before going to Wal-Mart (which is completely separate issue to be covered in a different post).

Second, people that are into indie music tend to thrive on the new. What does Pitchfork like that came out this week? What was reviewed well at the Onion AV Club? An artist like M. Ward, whose track “Chinese Translation” from his year-old (and fantastic) record Post-War is included on the comp, doesn’t have the largest potential fan base. I’m going to go out on an (admittedly) rickety limb here and say that in the last year, a huge percentage of people that would be into his album have already heard it. Yes, there are people out there that would probably like Post-War that have never heard it, but they’re not going to discover it at Wal-Mart.

Prove me wrong. Comment on how off-base I am and why this move will be looked back on as the harbinger of good fortune for indie artists. Or call me arrogant, a snob. Either way. Any dialog is good dialog. [ms]

(via Idolator)

UPDATE : Matt LeMay over at Pitchfork feels similarly. And, more importantly, he feels it weeks after I did. [ms]