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The Album Cycle: Where Do We Go From Here?
by BrainBurner

    It’s South by Southwest 2012, and I have time to kill between panels. So, I duck into this especially tiny 6th Street bar, whose name escaped me even then, for a beer. There’s a guy and his guitar onstage, and he’s got to be no older than 21-22. Even between me, the bouncer, the next band up, and the bartender, I served as an audience of one. With a kind of rustic charm, he performed John Mellencamp covers and Bruce Springsteen standbys between originals about prom night and leaving Charleston. Maybe I was more pacified than entertained, but for a brief period he held my attention, and I felt obliged to shake his hand.

    We got to talking, and when it came out what I do for a living, he got antsy and excited. Tossing out Twitter handles and SoundCloud links, I’ll never forget when he grabbed my arm, looked me dead in the eye, and said, “I’d sell my grandma or buy you a horse just to have someone listen.” I left a few minutes later, and though I never did look him up, I still think about him from time to time.

    I think about his state of mind, occupying that hazy space between determination and desperation, and I can’t help but see a sense of that throughout the music industry. No one’s offering anyone people or farm animals, but there’s this unshakable notion that the business is also struggling just to be heard. So, as the cliche goes, desperate times call for desperate measures, and more and more labels and PR reps and bands are getting clever with their album rollouts.