matt sebastian (dot com)

My wife and friends no doubt are tired of hearing me bemoan the horrifying makeover that XM Satellite Radio received at the hands of Sirius Satellite Radio one day last November, as the “merged” companies sprung a combined lineup on unsuspecting subscribers to both services. It was bad enough that the joint company almost immediately reneged on promises of offering a la carte programming packages. Instead, subscribers to both services got essentially the same lineup, with a good deal of XM’s more eclectic and deeper-digging channels dumped in favor of their lesser Sirius counterparts.

For me, an XM subscriber since 2002, it was a real kick in the throat. Gone were XM’s beloved troika of alt-rock stations — Fred, Lucy and Ethel — replaced instead by Sirius stations so heavy on repetition that I heard U2′s “I Will Follow” twice within 20 minutes on First Wave — on the very morning of the switch, no less. Things didn’t get much better. While Fred was a revelatory mix of ’80s college rock, mixing semi-popular hits with lesser-known album cuts, rare B-sides and criminally overlooked bands like the House of Love and the Godfathers, Sirius’ First Wave, on first blush, was pretty much all well-known singles, all the time — over and over again. You can only stand hearing Depeche Mode’s “People are People” so many times in one day.

Last month, I was on the brink of canceling the subscriptions to our two XM radios. When I called in, I was offered a free month on each to stay. So I decided to give it a bit more time.  Then I dropped a note to SiriusXM vice president Jon Zellner, expressing my dismay over the merged lineup, and particularly the Fred/First Wave switch, since that station was one of the main reasons I pay for satellite radio.

Much to my surprise, Zellner responded within about a half hour, specifically addressing my complaints, and offering assurances that Sirius was dumping more songs into its playlists — presumably to pacify irritated XM subscribers. But he also made some very salient points about the nature of satellite radio:

“Something you may not know is the fact that XM subscribers like yourself who signed up in 2002 were even different than more recent XM converts who didn’t seek us out…they just bought a car but fell in love with the service. Fred was one of those channels that attracted very knowledgeable early alt fans like yourself but for every one of you, there were others who thought the music on Fred was just too weird. You may have noticed that Fred became more and more familiar in recent years and that was by design to cater to XM’s growing audience.”

Interesting point. The original premise of satellite radio was that it would offer an untold number of niche stations, unspooling so many different musical threads that it would pull in a sufficient number of listeners to make the service profitable — which, of course, is the Long Tail theory. That, however, didn’t work with satellite radio, which has never turned a profit. As Zellner writes, XM has spent the years since its launch in 2001 making itself less niche-based. Sirius always was modeled more on the repetition-heavy FM format, and relies more on overly chatty DJs; now the combined service continues to emphasize familiarity over discovery.

Still, it remains better than FM radio. And just as Zellner promised, the playlists on the Sirius stations are getting noticeably deeper, even if there’s still a bit too much repeptition. But gone are the days when I would listen to First Wave for a stretch and hear nothing but single after single, many of which were so mainstream they should be played on the ’80s “hits” channel, not the alternative station.

And then, driving home from work one night last week, I actually heard something completely unexpected on First Wave: a b-side. It was U2′s cover of “Everlasting Love,” a ’60s chestnut the band recorded for the flip side of “All I Want is You” in 1989.

Now that’s progress. First Wave’s still no Fred, but if the station’s programmers are starting to recognize that college-rock stations in the ’80s didn’t just play strings of radio hits by Duran Duran and the Police, then maybe they’re getting somewhere. Growing up in San Diego, for example, I vividly remember 91X playing — in pretty heavy rotation — b-sides like “Dangerous” (Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus”) or “Harold and Joe” (The Cure’s “Never Enough”).

I’m not confident satellite radio’s going to last, given both the plight of the carmakers in this troubled economy and the almost certain rise of mobile Web radio. But it seems like SiriusXM is listening to its customers (the company also recently reinstated some of the channels it dumped in November), and for now, that’s enough to keep me on board.

This week’s big news in the journalism world? The announcement that the Hearst Corp. is putting the 146-year-old Seattle Post-Intelligencer up for sale, following the lead of my employer, the E.W. Scripps Co., which last month dropped the bombshell it may close the Rocky Mountain News if a buyer isn’t found by sometime this month.

But Steven Swartz, president of Hearst’s newspaper division, took it one step further than Scripps, essentially announcing the death of the newspaper’s print edition, according to the P-I’s story on the announcement:

“One thing is clear: At the end of the sale process, we do not see ourselves publishing in print,” Swartz told employees. “Since 2000, the P-I has lost money each year, and the losses have escalated and continue to escalate in 2009. We have had to make a very tough decision.”

Now, I have real mixed feelings about what’s going on in Denver and Seattle, which are very similar situations, given that both papers are on the bottom end of a joint-operating agreement. Here in Denver, I’ve got friends and former colleagues working at the Rocky — some of whom have posted here — and, under pretty much any scenario that unfolds, many of them likely will lose their jobs. And that’s a terrible thing not just for those talented journalists, but also the population of metro-Denver, which will lose, either fully or partially, an absolutely invaluable source of local news.

That being said, someone needs to take the plunge. This year, some major newspaper is going to have to shut down its printing press, go online-only and begin the daunting task of figuring out a financial model to make newsgathering — real reporting, not just aggregation — survive post-paper.

And I’d love to to see the Rocky go first, in whatever form that might entail. It’d certainly be better, for Denver and journalism as a whole, to at least attempt a Web-only operation, rather than fold entirely. We can only hope Scripps, or a willing buyer, is ready to lead the way.

Today, finally, the wall-rattling debut album from Scottish quartet Glasvegas came out in the U.S., four months, to the week, since it hit shops in the U.K. — and download services worldwide. It’s an occasion I mark both because Glasvegas ranked as my No. 1 album of 2008, and because the old industry practice of delayed releases for different territories is so desperately antiquated these days.

I first heard the band shortly before the album’s release, having downloaded it from some leak blog I follow via RSS. I didn’t love it at first, but it grew on me, to the point — probably sometime in October — that I decided to buy it. So I hit Twist & Shout in Denver, and was shocked to find out the CD hadn’t yet been released in the U.S.  I didn’t know they still did that. Luckily, T&S had the import vinyl, so I snatched that up. (It sounds fantastic, by the way; I described it here as “heavy on fuzz and stomp, with sing-songy anthems soaked in reverb.”)

Frankly, I’d forgotten the album wasn’t out here until Monday, when a review copy of the CD landed in my mailbox at work. Turns out it was scheduled, at long last, for an American release today. Talk about missing the boat; Columbia Records, for whatever reason, opted not to capitalize on the Web buzz that accompanied Glasvegas’ leak and release last year, leaving American fans to buy it on iTunes — for those willing to spend money for a collection of tinny sounding 1′s and o’s — or seek out import copies. Or take the path of least resistance and download it illegally. It’s not like Glasvegas’ label made it easy for fans to buy the band’s CD… until now.

So, to mark the occasion — and because Plan A fell through at the last minute — I put the band on the cover of the newspaper tomorrow. Now if they’d just expand their tour itinerary beyond scattered coastal dates… (Edit: Spoke too soon; spring dates were announced this week, including an April 9 stop at Denver’s Bluebird Theater.)

There’s been a lot of chatter over the past week about Nielsen SoundScan’s annual year-end music sales figures , which, once again, portend doom and, well, more doom for the beleaguered record industry. In 2008, CD sales fell another 20 percent, while sales of digital albums and digital singles rose 32 percent and 27 percent, respectively. That doesn’t sound too bad — downloads are just replacing CD revenue, right? — until you look at the raw numbers. CD sales dropped by 87.9 million units last year. Even with 2008′s big spike, people still only downloaded 65.8 million albums total. And sure, more than 1 billion single tracks were downloaded from various online music sellers — but at 99 cents, or thereabouts, a pop, that’s pocket change to an industry that still sold 450.5 million CDs last year.

As the Associated Press reported this week:

The report continues a troubling trend for the recording industry, which has a harder time maintaining profits when consumers buy single songs instead of albums. “You can see the overall unit sales as a positive, but their model is really built on album sales and that just continues to decline,” said Silvio Pietroluongo, director of charts for Billboard magazine.

What’s most interesting, however, in the AP’s report is a little nugget buried at the end of the story:

Ironically, as digital downloads grew, vinyl album sales also climbed. In 2008, more vinyl albums were purchased (1.88 million) than any other year since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking sales in 1991.

Looking at the stats, sales of new vinyl albums increased 25 percent last year, up 380,000 units from 1.5 million total to 1.88 million. Numbers like that are still fairly insignificant in the scheme of things, but it’s a promising trend. Still, I can’t see vinyl ever moving beyond niche status, a plateau it may one day share with CDs after the music world finally, and inevitably, goes nearly all-digital.

What’s really interesting is to see what new records people are buying:

2008 TOP TEN VINYL ALBUMS
(12/31/2007 – 12/28/2008)

Title/Artist (Units Sold)
1. In Rainbows / Radiohead (25,800)
2. Abbey Road / The Beatles (16,500)
3. Chinese Democracy / Guns N’ Roses (13,600)
4. Funplex / The B-52′s (12,800)
5. Third / Portishead (12,300)
6. In the Aeroplane Over the Sea / Neutral Milk Hotel (10,200)
7. Dark Side of the Moon / Pink Floyd (10,200)
8. Fleet Foxes / Fleet Foxes (9,600)
9. Death Magnetic / Metallica (9,400)
10. O.K. Computer / Radiohead (9,300)

So what this tells us, apparently, is that the so-called vinyl resurgence likely is being spurred by two types of people: fans of classic (Fab Four, the Floyd) and hard rock (Metallica and GNR, with an impressive showing, considering that album was released just a month ago), and indie-loving hipsters (Radiohead, Fleet Foxes and — hello! — Neutral Milk Hotel). To further generalize, the former probably are hot on the nostalgia tip, while the latter… well, they’re hipsters being hip. And right now that means spinning records.

And then there’s the 12,800 people who inexplicably chose to buy a new B-52′s album on vinyl in 2008. Not sure what that’s called.

Gratuitous plug: For an excellent overview of why the music industry’s in such dire straits, check out Steve Knopper’s “Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age.” Reviewed here by yours truly, plus an interview with the author. Check it out.

Guess the best way to launch a new blog isn’t to spend your first month getting into the swing of posting… before abandoning the thing entirely for five months. Not that I wasn’t reminded, on an almost hourly basis, about this site’s existence through the stream of comment notifications cascading into my inbox. There’s got to be a faster way to delete 3,736 spam comments than going page-by-page. And without accidentally deleting the legit comments left on older posts. Oops.

Anyway, to make a long story short, I was sort of sidetracked in late July when a new job landed in my lap, one that required supervising a newspaper and Web site redesign and content overhaul, the launch of annual back-to-school editions, a staffing reorganization and a move to new offices. All in the first few weeks.

Now that the dust has settled, and for want of any proper New Year’s resolutions, I figure it’s time to give this thing a reboot. What that means, I’m not entirely sure. Stay tuned. Or not.

Gawker today posted a missive calling on newspapers to stop allowing readers to comment on their stories (as opposed to those papers’ blogs, which for reasons not quite fully explained, are different). The argument:

Comments are thought to be an added value to a newspaper’s site — providing another reason to read. You come for the article, and stay for the interesting discussion. The only problem is, there is no interesting discussion. Almost never. Not even from the mythical supersmart New York Times readers.

At the Camera, I’d say this is somewhat true. There certainly are an abundance of pointless, often unnecessarily mean-spirited comments left on our stories; discussion, even when it starts out on-topic, often degenerates into name-calling and personal attacks. Our most frequent and identifiable commenters are almost exclusively defined by their constant negativity, complaining and attacks. (As I write this, a reader-flagged comment hits my inbox; the commenter called the subject of one our news stories “the wicked witch of the west,” then added, “She sucks!!!”)

Yet I will defend reader commenting on one key point: In many ways, it can turn the process of reporting the news into a conversation, one that the reader can weigh in on, and even help out with. I encourage our reporters to always keep tabs on the comments left on their stories, particularly if they’ve just posted a first run-through of a story that will be updated later that evening with additional reporting. On many occasions, readers have pointed out where we’re wrong, suggested fresh angles for follow-up, noted holes in the reporting and — most importantly — even come forward as sources. Sure, it’s often done in snarky or even condescendingly rude tones, but the important part, if journalists can be a bit more thick-skinned, is that it ultimately makes the reporting better. In a small way, it’s a way to crowdsource the news, or at least part of that process.

So as nasty and negative as reader comments can be and usually are, the pros ultimately outweigh the cons, at least for us.

This may be too good to pass up: The city of Denver is auctioning off 28 of the original wooden benches from the storied Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison. According to a city news release:

Original benches at Red Rocks Amphitheatre, installed for the venue’s opening in 1941, have deteriorated over the course of the last 60 years. Made of old-growth Redwood lumber, it is impossible to replace the benches using the same material, and the old benches are being replaced with a Brazilian lumber called Ipé (“ē-pay”), a pest and fire-resistant type of wood that is grown and harvested through the ecologically-friendly practice of sustainable yield forestry. Many of the old Redwood benches can be reused and are currently available to the public through a City and County of Denver surplus property online auction, similar to those held on eBay.

They’re being sold in lots of two-to-four 10-foot-long benches. Unfortunately, word’s gotten out; yesterday, the lots were going for $7 or $8. High bids currently are hovering around $160 to $200, and bidding continues until 5 p.m. Saturday. Too bad they didn’t slice ‘em up into smaller lots; Denver probably could make even more cash that way, given then vast number of fans who parked themselves on those planks over the years. To bid, go here and scroll down past the iPods and other electronic gear to get to the benches.

Now, I’ve never been much of a Duran Duran fan — although I’ll cop to having once owned a well-worn cassette of Notorious — but I very much enjoyed Nick Rhodes’ recent paean to the so-called vinyl resurgence, which has become something of a topic du jour among journos at increasingly mainstream publications. On the band’s site, Rhodes recounts the transformation of Duran Duran’s pre-gig ritual, thanks to the introduction of a turntable:

As if drawn by magnetism, we each made our approach to the deck, rifled through the slim pile of 12” discs on offer and slowly lowered the needle into the grooves to bring the sound of the vinyl experience to our room. We were overwhelmed with joy, what was this mysterious feeling gatecrashing the backstage area? It was far reaching and highly contagious, the crew were smiling uncontrollably, our tour manager had new spring in his step, something had happened, could it possibly be a serious outbreak of nostalgia? Maybe, but why was it so uplifting? Why did we all feel the same? This outmoded apparatus had completely transformed our pre-show routine. The simple truth is that the records sounded amazing, they created a real mood, it was deeply satisfying, the crackles and hisses only served to enhance the atmosphere.

So well put. Having collected vinyl myself, on and off, since the late-’80s, I find myself drawn more and more, once again, to the format. In many ways, the ease of acquiring, cataloging and transporting mp3s — which I do listen to, and have tens of thousands of on my computers and iPod — has muted much of the joy of music collecting. There’s still something much more satisfying about finding a near-pristine copy of Superchunk’s Tossing Seeds in the used bin at Twist & Shout, bringing it home and giving it a spin on the turntable than just grabbing the same tracks off Soulseek. For me, the more I listen to digital music, the more I also gravitate back to vinyl.

It’s a strange dichotomy.

(Of course, without mp3s, I’d have never heard this killer live set of Sonic Youth covers — including all-time faves “100%” and “The Diamond Sea” — by Dead Confederate, which my friend John recently brought to my attention.)

Continued my newspaper’s dabbling with Twitter yesterday, figuring the supremely hyped release of Apple’s iPhone 3G would be a good opportunity to use the service for some live coverage. I’d set up Twitter accounts for the Camera (as well as our sister sites BuffZone, Broomfield Enterprise and Colorado Daily) a few months ago, but so far have used it mostly to push headlines and links via RSS. After live-Tweeting Denver-area campaign stops by John McCain and Barack Obama, I figured we’d give it a try again with the iPhone.

We had a reporter, photographer and video team at Boulder’s Twenty Ninth Street mall beginning at 7 a.m. Friday, by which time the line at the Apple Store already was 100 to 200 people long. My reporter started out e-mailing multiple postings at a time for a live blog I was updating on dailycamera.com; I then parsed those updates into 140-word bursts and Tweeted them. As the morning progressed, the reporter stashed his laptop and went old-school, just phoning in short reports that I then typed up for the blog and Twitter.

To push for some interactivity, I sent out a Tweet asking the Camera’s followers (we have about 140) whether any of them were in line in Boulder or Broomfield and, if so, to send us photos and reports. I asked a few times, but only got one response, from Dan Pacheco, whose photo of the line outside the Broomfield AT&T Store we posted on our live blog. (Speaking of Dan, he used the iPhone/Twitter experience to demonstrate how to aggregate conversations geographically.)

Anyway, I’d hoped for a little better interactivity yesterday — among the people I follow from my personal Twitter feed, a number were Tweeting reports from the Boulder and Broomfield lines. But this was a good start, and something we’ll build on.

Later, one of my co-workers — himself a Twitter user — asked why I just didn’t have the reporter Tweeting himself, either from his laptop or via his cellphone. A good question, and one I’d considered beforehand. Ultimately, I felt it was easier to keep things simple for the reporter on scene; if he was going to Tweet, it would still need to be edited and compiled into more narrative posts for the blog on the Camera’s site. While short bursts of information are the norm on Twitter, that’s just one way to tell a story — and I’m not sure it’s always the best. By having our reporter blog, then cutting that up and sending it out via Twitter, I think we hit on the best of both worlds.

With an institution as revered, at least among rock geeks, as the annual Pazz & Jop poll, you’d think Village Voice would make an effort to market its vast archive of critic ballots, annual lists and essays. For a lot of us, this is rock history. Instead, though, the venerable alt-weekly has some years’ results still online, while others have vanished… and that’s just from the modern, Internet age. Setting up an archival site (something a little more comprehensive and interactive than the abbreviated lists on founder Robert Christgau’s page) that collects roughly 35 years’ worth of material would be a great Web resource, and maybe even present a revenue opportunity for the Voice.

I only noticed Pazz & Jop’s haphazard Web presence when I tried to hunt down my own ballots (I’ve voted each year since 2003), only to come up with three. While I found old links to the 2005 and 2006 lists and ballots (mainly through Glenn McDonald’s old critical alignments), it appears the Voice has scrubbed those from the Web. (Of course, I suspect the online neglect of the Voice’s rock-critic institution could have a lot to with the departures in 2006 of Christgau and Chuck Eddy.)

Interestingly enough, I can also no longer find my ballots to Idolator’s rival 2006 and 2007 Jackin’ Pop polls; those, too, gave gone AWOL (although the ’06 master list is still up). [Update: Thanks to Maura at Idolator, I've located my '07 ballot.]

For the record, here’s how I voted. I still agree with most of it, although I have to wonder about my No. 1 placement for U2′s How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. Still a fine, even underrated album (especially when compared to the lesser All That You Can’t Leave Behind). Yet it hasn’t quite held up.

Anyway, the lists:

• 2003 Pazz & Jop ballot
• 2004 Pazz & Jop ballot
• 2007 Pazz & Jop ballot