Ok, I've not heard Speech Debelle's album as I write this, so can't comment on its merits, but I have a question to the music biz in general.
If this album is so good, good enough to be recognised to be submitted for a major award (not to mention major sales jack), how come its only sold 3,000 copies up till now? *
There is so much good music around. So why does the biz continually promote mediocre crud? How many other brilliant artists am I missing, and who've also sold 3,000 CDs, when several million would be justified?
Biz: don't blame illegal downloaders, blame yourselves for not seeing the bleedin' obvious. If you promote crud, you lose sales. If you promote decent music then you gain sales. You'll get illegal downloaders too, but I'll buy a CD and not rely on Spotify when the music is good enough for me to keep it permanently on my iPod. Of course, when the Symbian version of Spotify is released, I'm becoming a premium subscriber.
Another another thing: over 40s buy music too. I am old enough to remember when pop could be bought by a teeny, my mum, and sometimes my granny. This does not necessarily indicate its high quality, but then pop is meant to be more Stephen King than Pushkin. Quality isn't the point - listenablity is. Most of the pop I love has no musical merit at all, but conjures up memories, grabs you by the feet and gets you bopping. Its a heart, not a head thang.
I will post a brief comment on Speech Debelle's album after I've played it.
* Yes, I know, Awards don't indicate whether something is good or not, and anyway, that's in the ear of the beholder of course. But no smoke without fire, right?
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