The future of music 2005
More competition, more MP3s, more gigs and more gigabytes, more free-agent artists, more great sounds – expect 2005 to be a hell of a year for music.

By Kimberly Chun

YOU CAN KEEP your Friendster, Tribe, MySpace, and all those other virtual hook-up services – San Francisco trio So So Many White White Tigers began with a good old-fashioned Missed Connection submitted to Craigslist by Miss Liza Thorn, the group's lead growler.

That's how she met her bandmates, guitar player Ned and, eventually, drummer Gerald, about a year ago. "I was at a Green Day concert, and I saw this guy in the crowd, and I was like, 'Damn,' you know, and I was too scared to go up to him. And so I put up a Missed Connection ad that I wanted to meet him, and Ned answered it by chance, and we started making music together. The band just sort of happened."

Add in a name that was dreamed up during a desert vision quest – "I think of myself as spiritual," Thorn says a little sheepishly – name-checks Siegfried and Roy's favorite cats, and gets its rhythm courtesy of a friend with a stutter, and a few short months later you have every reason to, as Thorn describes her performance style, "freak out and have seizures."

All elbows, jagged rhythms, cranked guitars, and raw squall – this is So So Many White White Tigers, who, with just one CD-R under their pelts, may be in your future. It's easy to imagine them sharing a stage with the Blood Brothers or the Distillers, and it could happen, in a Bay Area music scene that's increasingly creeping into the rest of the country's consciousness. The return of Green Day's American Idiot (Warner Bros.) to the top of the Billboard charts, racking up sales of five million according to its label, is only part of the phenomenon – critical consensus in publications like Spin also fingers Comets on Fire's Blue Cathedral (Sub Pop) and Joanna Newsom's Milk-Eyed Mender (Drag City) as standout albums of 2004. But there's something deeper and more indicative of changes in music and its delivery systems going on, just like the unexpected fall-down punky magnetism of So So Many White White Tigers when they perform at spaces like Rickshaw Stop and the knocked-down knockout, Courtney Love-esque charisma of Thorn as she strides through the Bay Guardian office in bare legs, a sawed-off denim mini, and smudgy bedroom eyes.

The very existence of young, inspired, and possibly polarizing bands like So So Many White White Tigers – you probably love them or hate them – prompts the question, whither music in 2005? I looked up a variety of thinkers, insiders, musicians, and definition-defying dreamers who were willing to free-associate on that question, in an environment that saw a slight rise in album sales the week after Christmas with Eminem's Encore, at 198,000 copies, over OutKast's Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, at 151,000 at the same time last year. According to Nielsen SoundScan, digital track sales also surged to 6.7 million downloads, a new high for digital music sales in one week. With 2004 U.S. album sales up for the first time in four years, and more artists, resurgent genres, and listeners with little white boxes on their hips than ever before, we can all agree that it's going to be a nutty roller coaster of a year, both locally and nationally.

Download this lifestyle

With Apple chief executive Steve Jobs stating that his company sold 4.5 million iPods during the 2004 holiday season, expect Aaron Newton, founder of groundbreaking indie MP3 site Epitonic and now product director of CNET's Download.com Music, to say those digital music – and CD – sales are the natural extension of all those holiday gift cards and that omnipresent MP3 player beneath the tree. "MP3 is a lifestyle thing now. It means digital music – it doesn't mean a file," he says on the phone from his South of Market office.

"Do you remember what happened when Sony released the Walkman? There was this true renaissance of people consuming music on a daily basis. I think it says something that the defining piece of equipment in 2004 is a 'Walkman,' " Newton says. "It's no longer about 'I'm going to go buy a record and put on music.' Now it's 'I'm going to get so much music on my Walkman that I'm prepared for anything.' Consider the smallest iPod is 15 gigs, and that holds, like, 3,000 songs – seven days' worth of music. Now you have the capacity to put thousands of songs into your play rotation, and that creates quite an appetite."

On the flip side, longtime observers like former Hotel Utah Saloon manager and Great American Music Hall talent booker and current Cafe du Nord owner Guy Carson see artists who don't need to lip-sync playing live more often because their records may not be selling and "major-label artist development is dead – the labels are cutting their own throat – so there are no new amphitheater-sized acts, because there's no artist development. You don't just hock your new band into a 20,000-seater."

Where's the money, honey?

Jackson Haring, general manager at High Road Touring, doubts it's a matter of money lost. "I don't know that the artists are making any less, because frequently they weren't getting paid from the labels anyway," he says laconically. "The artists no longer have the label as a partner in garnering media attention, so the emphasis goes back to the show. Artists will get local press when they come to town and sell CDs at the show. It used to be the recording was the raison d'être, and now the disc is the lasting memento from a live experience. Sixty CDs sold – that's significant. That was a good week's SoundScan in a market. People have emotional attachment to a show, and it's there, no sales tax, and they know they already want it."

Carson puts it in his own way, as he jumps in a cab to get his teeth cleaned. "I used to tell bands, 'Forget about corporate jobs.' That's what they really wanted, corporate jobs when they were signed to corporate labels. My message is always to be a martyr and die for your art – don't worry about the money, because there probably isn't any. Maybe there is for you, but you'll be in the one percentile."

And as major-label R&D has faded, the recording process has opened up with Pro Tools and its kin, and it's become easier to get one's own discs made, artists have had more access to the marketplace, Haring offers. "It's freer, there's more competition, and personally I think there's more good music than there ever has been. I wouldn't be able to quantify that, but it's a vibe I get – just the amount of stuff I get in here that is of quality and takes chances. People are returning to making music on their terms instead of chasing market trends: 'I can dare to be me.' "

Blog city

That me might find an audience – and critics – online, says Julianne Shepherd, a former Portland Mercury music editor who now works at Emusic, which provides content to iTunes, and the mistress of many a music writer's fave blog, Cowboyz'N'Poodles.

"The M.I.A./Diplo Funds Terrorism mix tape is a great example of a mix tape you can buy online – in the case of her and Dizzee Rascal, the Internet has been key in their popularity, almost forcing magazines to look at their coverage," she says. "Music listening is so much more global because of the Internet, so criticism has to be more global. Fluxblog and Catchdubs.com and MP3 blogs are really the way. Catchdubs is an editor at Fader, but his blog is really, really popular because he's a DJ and he really seeks out the hot new whatever – limited-edition sneakers, MP3s. He puts out really good mix tapes as well. That's a good example of how blogging can be a dynamic interactive platform that a magazine can't be."

And in the process of getting chance-taking music out, Haring believes, the Net's eclectic aural counterpart, satellite radio, will come to the fore. "I think this is a year that Internet and satellite radio start taking terrestrial radio's lunch – it's much better programming, and it's a technology that's been around for a couple years now. Consumers have been getting used to it through digital satellite TV, and for people who commute, it's a great way to get connected with music."

Aaron Axelsen, the music director for Live 105, 105.3 FM, doesn't believe that battle is over, though the week I spoke to him, a major alternative station in Washington, D.C., switched its format to ranchero. "It's an interesting crossroads for radio – more competition with satellite radio and iPods and MP3s and 21st-century mediums that have empowered people to create their own musical mix – but radio listenership has maintained even though we've been hit by all these new-school mediums, so we have to work extra hard to come up with creative programming." Fostering a sense of local community – including gathering listener feedback from, say, the recent Arcade Fire shows – is part of the appeal of mainstream commercial radio, he says. "It's an exciting time. I'm happy satellite radio exists. I listen to it, but sometimes I feel like it's devoid of personality," he adds.

"Exciting" is also the word Carson uses for 2005. Translation: lots of tough competition. "San Francisco, to me, having been here for a long time, is slowly transitioning into a world-class destination. It's been painful to this date, but it's been the trend especially with the advent of these new clubs. We're getting closer to that. In 2005, I see increased competition in the club circuit, which means bookers need to go further afield to fill their clubs with interesting acts. It used to be whatever comes across your desk, and now people are digging, so there will be more diversity and more viable musicality."

That music will likely run the gamut, though Matt Hickey, an agent with High Road, thinks it will continue to have an '80s spin, especially if it's coming out of the U.K. – and he singles out Bloc Party on Vice Records.

In addition to the continued dominance of '80s-ish groups like Franz Ferdinand, Scissor Sisters, and Interpol, Haring sees a return to loungey downtempo as well as, he adds, "a lot of music that I might term post-rock, that may incorporate elements of classical music, whether it's piano or cello or viola, a band like Ida or the Rachels or Low. I'm seeing more music by artists that's a little more complex than 4/4."

Mutant X

While some, like Newton, see a revival in classic rock among younger listeners, others, like Shepherd, hope new mutant musical genres, the hybridization of different music forms, will take seed. "Reggaeton – that's what everyone was bumping out of their cars in NYC over the summer. I think more hybrid forms of music like that – rai and some soca – will be a natural side effect of global disenfranchisement. It's a folk music, and it also shows how omnipresent hip-hop is, and Miami bass. And it's kind of coming full circle, with hip-hop going back to its roots too."

Perhaps down-homey sounds, including traditional music from all parts of the world, appeal to listeners looking for grounding in an overwhelming and increasingly artificial media landscape. Is folk the aural equivalent of a peace movement, bidding its listeners to go back to the land rather than toward luxury and materialism, or a permutation of conservatism, a flight back to ye good olde days? Or perhaps it's as simple as a search for music that has withstood trend cycles, marketing campaigns, and neglect.

As Oakland Yoruba priestess, bilingual teacher, and Six Degrees vocalist Gladys "Bobi" Cespedes – who's spending part of 2005 putting her own folklore to music, translating her songs to Orisas, or Yoruban deities, into English – says, "That's what's so beautiful about having culture and folklore: you can take it and apply it, and you can go back to it. It's just there, and it doesn't go anywhere. There's a need for us to make sense of the confusion going on in society today, make sense of the lack of unity and love that appears to be in the society. We're basically looking for an answer, basically looking for love to fix things."

And folk music in all its variations – including the more twisted Incredible String Band variety – continues its rise, at Amoeba Music's Hollywood store, along with reggaeton and metal of all varieties, according to company co-owner Kate Pearson. And maybe folk can be considered the sonic version of vinyl collecting, which Pearson says continues to increase in sales at Amoeba. "It's a format that was decreed dead by the industry, but people get the bug, and they're all different ages. Sometimes they drag the record player out of the garage, or they go through the dollar bins, and they rediscover the romance of that warm crackle, that warm sound and feeling, if you will. Maybe it's because I feel nostalgic, but I know a lot of 20-year-old kids who only buy vinyl, and it's all DJs and kids in their bedrooms. That will continue, I'd say. What we do is recycle culture, in that way – all different generations across formats. You can only sit in front of your computer for so long."

So whether you're sitting behind a monitor at home and following the year's developments, or pushed up against one at a show, chances are you'll be rousted or riled up in 2005. And ever a part of the zeitgeist, bands like So So Many White White Tigers consider it their sworn duty to stir you out of your complacency. "We just wanna be a band that if we went to a show, we'd be excited, we'd get hot and bothered," Thorn says, adding that since 2004, it's just been "a blur, a blur." Forecast: turbulence, welcome or not, up ahead.