Christmas - it's over like Expo

This morning after a truly lack luster Christmas spent virtually alone, snow bound, suffering with achey-flu-like symptoms, and then yesterday from 11:45 am to 2:10 pm, joining in the “fun” with six other homeowners up on the roof of our apartment building, heaving twelve-thousand pounds of snow off to the ground, well, I have awakened to the fact that I am a cynical and fearful person. Buddy's down to one last tin of Fancy Feast and it's the Salmon flavor one which he's not wild about.

And even worse, reading the NY Times online this morning, right there in black and whitish, “Billboard reported that three-quarters of Santogold’s (singer Santi White – whom I don’t know or listen to) excellent album has already been licensed for commercials, video games and soundtracks, and Ms White appears in advertisements for sneakers.”

Journalist Jon Pareles has it right, it’s a hard one to fathom at times. He goes on to state, “this is the reality of the 21st-century music business. Selling recordings to consumers as inexpensive artworks to be appreciated for their own sake is a much-diminished enterprise now that free copies multiply across the Web.”

Good grief. I love his description of the two types of music listeners – me being of the first collective – an apparent dying bread; “While people (I’d be one of these people) still love music enough to track it down, collect it, argue over it and judge their Facebook friends by it, many see no reason to pay for it.”

Jon Pareles’ full article was published December 24, 2008, entitled Songs From the Heart of a Marketing Plan.

And so far, I have only received and opened 2 Christmas presents. One from Richard - thank you dear for the multiple DVDs -they have come in handy these past few days; and one from Hartwick - a lovely collector book of Audrey Hepburn. I'm hoping to get a few new CDs - including Jill Barber's Oh Heart. That is, if this fricken snow would disappear!