Episode 23 - The Next Great Music Genre

welcome to this episode of the wolf and

the shepherd today we are going to be

talking about asian

genres of music i know that kind of

sounds

a little bit random but we've been kind

of discussing this over the last couple

of days

and the fact that there is kind of a

black hole there

from asia as far as music

in the way the genres of music have

worked

we we've been really struggling with

why is there such a hole there why has

there

not been anything come out that just you

know hits the charts

and gets everybody

excited well actually if we're being

honest the reason we came up with this

topic is because

the shepherd shepard and i were actually

trying to see if our phones were truly

listening to us true so we came up with

something

uh a phrase that would be absolutely

ridiculous that we could guarantee

it wasn't coincidence if we started

getting hit with targeted ads

and in before we disclose what that

phrase

was we've been doing this now for five

days i think

yeah is that correct for four to five

days

we have been having conversations both

over the phone over

text messages amongst ourselves just

trying to get our phones to pick up

on a certain phrase to then see if we

can get some

advertising something to

click with the internet

and we failed we

we tried our best we we did as good as

we can do

we said everything we could say we

phrased everything we could

phrase it certain ways we would turn our

phones

off we would put them in a different

room we would then have a conversation

we'd say

okay well let's try this we'd turn our

phones back on

and we we did everything we could and we

failed

well it's actually getting a bit

frustrating because i think we used the

phrase that many times that we

somehow convinced ourselves we were

genuinely interested in the topic

and now we just want to buy a t-shirt

and we can't find one anywhere

i'm also pretty sure that i've invented

this genre

in my head because i'm pretty sure i had

a dream that i was

listening to this music that doesn't

even exist

because we've been talking about it so

much we basically fooled ourselves we

we have destroyed our psyche as far as

this

genre is concerned so tell all the

listeners

what is this magical new

genre that we've been talking about well

first of all i want it

to be known that we created this musical

yes

yes trademark copyright yeah

all that good stuff we we own this yeah

so don't dare try and steal this from us

uh mainly because we don't have any

money to take you to court and you'll

probably just get away with it

and then if you did sue us or whatever

we're gonna get bored of that in like 15

seconds and let you have it yeah

oh we probably shouldn't let that out

okay all right but can we edit that out

later yeah

no we're too lazy to edit oh we don't

have any editing software right now we

don't

okay well anyway so yeah the phrase we

came up with

which we figured would be almost

impossible to

accidentally say was

gay asian disco

gay asian disc now i know now i know at

the mention of that phrase

people are trying to it well maybe

subliminally in their brain

trying to come up with a soundtrack

which would fit that style of music but

it's almost impossible

right and and of course by the way we

should mention

that both of our phones are on right now

yeah and

we're of course recording this into a

computer so

all the mentions we're doing are

continuing to

add to the fact that are the computers

listening to us or our phones listening

to us

even though we've been doing this over

the past four or five days this is just

more added you know

uh talk more

more added opportunities

for us to get some kind of ad as to

we want to buy gay asian music

or gay asian disco music yeah download

it to our phones whatever and

we've just we've come up short well well

i just want a t-shirt a free t-shirt to

be honest but i think by the time this

goes on the google would the t-shirt fit

you

um i'm not sure actually not not the way

i've been eating recently since the uh

kovid lockdown but um

i was kind of figuring that once this

goes once this gets uploaded to the

google podcasts

that on google marketplace there'll

probably be about

two dozen stores selling these t-shirts

within like

24 hours what so once again we're

missing out

on a marketing on a money making

opportunity

like we typically do but yeah that's

neither here nor there

well i mean i did actually look on

google i did

my i did my you know due diligence did

my research and

well i looked on the whole no i looked

on the whole first page i scrolled all

the way down to those numbers

before i close the browser no you're

you're lying a little bit because you

actually did a lot more research on this

topic than you've done on any other

topic

so don't don't don't lie you went to

page 12 on google

well you were that bored well i was look

i i actually clicked on the image search

part on google because i wanted to find

some funny photos but there was just

i could literally almost find nothing

and um

you know given this like four and a half

billion

asians or people who classify as asians

okay in the world and that's six roughly

about i think

60 in the world's population that sounds

right

there was just nothing there and so i

thought this is an untapped market

uh and so i i kind of felt like thomas

edison you know when he was sitting in

the bathroom and had that

eureka moment that he didn't have to

poop in the dark yeah or

or uh what was it newton that was

sitting under the apple tree the apple

fell on his head

i mean it uh was that him was that him

who said eureka

i thought was thomas edison in the bath

or am i getting my people mixed

stuff i don't remember him once again so

tasty is not getting any credit

right yeah so so basically this is one

of those

discoveries that a hundred years from

now

there's going to be a history book

written and it's going to be thomas

edison with electricity

it's going to be isaac newton with

gravity and it's going to be the wolf

and the shepherd with gay asian disc

yeah i think i think we'll actually make

more money than thomas edison did though

yeah i i think he kind of died poor

didn't he

yeah i think he did yeah yeah another

rabbit hole to discuss

get back on topic well actually on the

first um

first page of the google results and

remember i actually typed in gay asian

disco and i did it

uh in parenthesis

you know to make sure it actually had

the whole phrase

you know like in a linear fashion rather

than just the individual words but

on that first page two of the results i

got

uh was that asian americans are viewed

as more american if they are gay which

is kind of crazy because you know they

told me to sound more texan i had to use

the word y'all

but it sounds like they're putting a

little bit too much pressure on

americans

and let's be honest here's the problem

with you saying y'all you don't say

y'all like i say y'all

it sounds a little funny coming out of

your mouth even though you've been in

texas for a while

you you still don't have that texan

y'all

it yeah it sounds like you're you're

trying to pretend

like you're trying to fit in or whatever

by saying the word y'all so

yeah so there is that um but mind you

i'm kind of thinking that the

sweatshops in china making all those

lebron james jerseys could actually uh

if we invent this genre they can play

that gay asian disco genre doing the 18

hour shifts for motivation because let's

be honest

you know if you're running 28 cents a

day and getting beatings for misspelling

lakers as rikers that's not putting a

smile on any workers no

no it's not especially not those

six-year-old kids were yeah

yeah that that would be terrible but

maybe they decide to stop making the

jerseys

and then turn around and maybe they

could find the next

gay asian disco star that is sitting

there right in the sweatshops kind of

like a

an american idol kind of competition but

instead of that

it's more of a gay asian disco

idol competition do you think that'd be

like asia's got gay talent show

yes on tv yeah there you go why not

yeah why not why not do something like

that i can work i mean i think

um well i mean i i started messing

around with one of the apps

i have on my iphone which allows you to

create music

and it's more kind of rave and dance

music but i found out

you know if you do a few sound samples

and speed it up

like about six times more than normal i

think we've kind of hit

the uh sweet spot for the genre really

so i'm going to knock up

a full album i think you know across

this week and it'll be ready

for a release right pretty soon the

struggle you're gonna have with that

though

is your singing voice and i know you

think you have

voices nigel yeah this wonderful singing

voice

but it's it would better be

used to torture terrorism suspects

rather than you know let people enjoy

listening to your voice so you would

have to

find a singer somewhere have you heard

japanese people try and sing karaoke

i have actually well well no no

you know what that that was a little bit

stereotypical i have heard korean

people yeah korean singing

koreans love karaoke oh they love kerry

their music scene is terrible but they

can sing and that's the irony

you know they have really good voices

whereas the japanese don't

necessarily but the koreans do have

great voices which they

have terrible terrible music yeah it and

so

i guess it if you look at the genres of

like singer songwriter

there's not too much singer songwriter

over in asia it's

it's singer and no songwriter

because there's there's no good music

for them to

actually sing too totally get that well

i figured if we can't reach an audience

of 4.5 billion asians when um

i mean polka music is uh both mine and

yours

in our like top three genres of music

there was actually a song

called gage rifter polka by

fat louis sikowski and the big polka

band

so i mean if there if there's room in

the music market for that

i think there's room for us in this new

genre of music absolutely

especially if we're getting drilled down

that close

with uh specific genres

there definitely is room for gay asian

disco

i think i think we can make this happen

we can set up a channel on spotify as

long as they don't want to be banned in

the uh

asian pacific right ah

you know that's gonna get difficult uh

that's gonna require a little bit of

research

i don't know if we're actually gonna

want to do that much research

but i think maybe we would have a

listener out there that

might be able to grab a hold of this and

we just get the royalties off of

it right and that's the that's the

beautiful thing about royalties right i

mean that's the

the captain of laziness as far as

making money right you just sit back and

everybody else is doing the work

and you just collect a check so right i

like the way this is going

so we we need somebody to do that now

you know this is a little bit kind of

tongue-in-cheek obviously this topic

that doesn't mean we're not actually

going to record some songs and actually

create a musical we're not

waiting no no we are no we are going to

do it oh please don't confuse me i

thought we were actually doing this now

now you're saying i'm not no i'm saying

the topic is a little bit

tongue-in-cheek but that doesn't mean

we're not going to try and make

something oh

okay i'm going to try money off stop

stop trying to confuse me

so there's any sponsors out there uh we

would like free

saki for life and some better quality

sushi than the shepherd gets from qt on

the way into work each

day you know what it's not that bad

it's it's really not that yeah but one

of the packets she bought had a sell by

date

before we'd even heard of covid19 yeah

but i can't

i can't read that stuff that takes too

much effort

but you know what when you leave that

stuff out in the sun it tastes great

after a while

yeah and i lost 19 pounds in four hours

after yeah

so yeah but hey you know once again

if we're looking at sponsors that's a

good diet plan yeah

i mean go ahead and and eat some bad

food eat some gas station sushi

and yeah you will lose some weight right

now

talking about genres and perhaps genres

which maybe

should have you would have thought that

they would have happened and like i said

i don't think there's been outside of

k-pop which

really isn't an asian musical genre

because i think it was the western world

who gave it that label

um are there any genres you know that

you've found hard to believe that

there's an audience for i mean i know we

made the comment about poker and

particularly that song which i think i'm

gonna

might be the first song i've paid for on

itunes in years but i might download

that one later

um i think the big problem has been the

rise of kids music

and kids are kind of told what to listen

to as opposed to

discovering music for themselves well a

lot of that comes from the whole

influencer crowd right yeah because uh

this person with you know five million

followers listens to this song

then everybody listens to this song

it was the same with and even this still

happens today with fm radio right

it you hear a song over and over and

over and over and over again

and all of a sudden you say to yourself

well i actually

like this song did you really like this

song

or did you just hear it so many times

over and over again that you decided

that yeah i

i like this song or are you being fooled

into that

i think there's a lot of that it it's

that old

paola it's you know just

repeating something constantly and then

next thing you know

somebody likes it well i mean i did

actually

text a couple of my friends who are

playing

casually in bands in the local kind of

bar circuit or were before

you know obviously the

and i asked them why they think the

music scene is

or has been a little bit stale and not

really developed too much

you know over the last decade and uh you

know one of them replied and said

i blame auntie nora for being a basic

[ __ ] and giving jessica an itunes gift

card for every holiday

because that gives the tweens too much

power to decide

you know what really sells sure in

and of course you know if you've got you

know

some kid right like you say a tween or

even a teen

right and they get this

itunes gift card a lot of them

don't even know exactly what they want

to download

so what do they do they ask their

friends

or they go on social media and they try

to figure out

what is good music right and you can

manipulate that you've got one popular

friend

that's got you know tons of real friends

and

friends on social media and they say

this is a great song

then you kind of force yourself into

believing that hey

this is a good song and so i'm going to

go ahead and buy it

yeah it happens all the time well i mean

before

well actually not not before but

you know younger kids tend to watch

and listen to most of their music on

youtube now before

they get into that position where auntie

nora does give them those itunes gift

cards

but if you had to guess what would you

think would be the highest played music

video on

youtube well before we go to that

let me ask you this remember mtv

used to actually you know put

video to music and that became

something that was looked after

sought after by everybody it wasn't just

about hearing the song they had to see

that visual

and then of course mtv went south and

they started doing reality shows and all

that

then it all moved to youtube but at one

point

it was all about the video and there's

plenty of

what i honestly in my opinion think are

great songs but then i

turn around and i say was that really a

good song or was it really

a good music video and i think it's a

great song uh

november rain let's be honest one of the

greatest music videos

ever done love that music video

uh was that really a good song i'm i'm

not really sure

right uh tonight tonight by the smashing

pumpkins

liked the song before i even saw the

music video

great music video one lots of mtv

music video awards all that good stuff

was it really that great of a song if

you would have went

back in history before you had the music

video

did music videos did that visual

change people's opinions about songs

just because there was something visual

to look at

while you were listening to it right but

with all that said

what is the the big one

what's going on right now what what is

that song

that based off of youtube views and

all that good stuff is is that

big hitter okay i'm going to give you a

little bit of an intro

baby shark baby shark has had uh

seven billion views on youtube now

before

the people who created baby shark get

too carried away

uh i just want to let you know my son

has autism and i think he's responsible

for about nine million of those views

well there's nothing wrong with that

well i mean he's

the funny thing is is like you know

despite the fact he's mostly non-verbal

there was one point

when he changed the kind of closed

caption things on his ipad and we

couldn't work out or turn it off

and he actually started singing the song

in japanese for almost like a month

until we figured out how to reset it

[Laughter]

now well you know it was

was there something about the visual

part

of the video for baby shark or was it

just the audio was it just him listening

to that song that

got him attached to it well you have to

think i mean if it had like

seven billion plays there must be

something in that song

which is so catchy which just hits the

you know point in the brain for kids

that

they just want to keep playing that song

because i mean we know there's not seven

billion kids

in the world right you know well i i

i remember get kind of going along these

same lines i

i remember being in the car

with my in-laws back when you know

before they were my in-laws i was just

dating my wife and my

mother-in-law had bought uh

oh what was the name of the band i i

know the name of the song

uh the wallflowers bought the wallflower

cd and had the song one headlight

on there and she put the cd in and

we listened to one headlight

i think at least 20 times

on repeat and she just kept listening to

the song listening to the song

love the song so i think once again you

just

you keep spitting that out to people and

you

keep forcing them to listen and then

eventually

you either love it or you hate it but

aren't your

aren't your wife's parents from mexico

yes

so are you sure it wasn't like a

mariachi cover band oh no

it was actually the wall no it it wasn't

but my mother-in-law

liked bob dylan and then found out jacob

dylan

had this band okay and that's where that

came from oh wow and and

truly loved the song i i honestly

thought on that

record i don't remember the name of the

record there was a song that

adam duretz from counting crows sang

back up on i thought that was the better

song

right on the record and yeah i've got

some radio play but

not as much as one headlight but if i

hear that song

today i will never forget driving around

in their car

listening to that song on repeat it

just yeah that's my memory of that song

yeah i mean it's kind of strange that

how you know different countries adopt

western music

for decades and decades and decades and

yet still don't really come up

with maybe a genre which

you know takes on in the rest of the

world like you know there's been a lot

of music

uh you know from well let's think about

it you know you've got

uh ireland right and so that's

that you know pub drinking music

you think about those old irish folk

tunes and

you know when st patrick's day comes

along people want to

sit there and sing along with those

songs and you've got

different parts of the united states

that they have

certain genres you've got west coast

music you've got east coast music

people get attached to that and

it gets repeated yeah but

other than ireland and some parts of

europe

and then certain segments of the united

states and let's not forget about

country

you know you got texas country you got

red dirt country

you got you know the pop country you got

all that but once you get past

that you don't really think about

anywhere else

of providing that big genre of music

right and you know i mean you know not

to be stereotypical but i think

most of the authentic asian music i've

heard

sounds more like my son when the

batteries are running out on his

electronic keyboards and he's trying to

annoy me

yeah yeah but um i gotta admit

i'm not gonna disagree with you on that

one but but i mean for a race which has

provided us with some of the best food

in the world

you know super fast bullet trains which

run on time and don't break down

everything there's technology

technology i just think they've put in a

bit of a lackluster effort with music

and specifically the gay music scene

yes yeah uh they're lacking there

yeah especially with in and once again

we could go down a big rabbit hole there

and let's try to avoid that but

they they could put a little bit more

effort there

yeah i mean but is it because there's no

money in it well i don't know maybe they

just figured they've provided

so much good stuff to the rest of the

world which is true i mean like along

like i said with food and technology and

all that i mean

two of my favorite things in life food

and technology but you know there are a

lot of unexpected

genres which have appeared out of

nowhere in the western world i mean if

you go back

to you know the late 70s early 80s when

you had

punk new wave new romantic i mean they

pretty much

came out of nowhere somewhat of a

backlash to the glam rock thing that

they wanted

anybody anybody to be able to pick up a

guitar and play

right especially in the 80s because you

had that stadium rock glam rock

we always called it hair bands right

there was such a backlash and that's why

in the early 90s grunge rock

appeared in alternative rock you know we

we don't want to hear these big massive

guitar solos

and and the guys standing up there on

stage with the big long hair

with the uh hairspray that's all

sprayed in their hair and looking like

that we we want something different

but then all of a sudden that

disappeared

yeah and now it's

more the computerized music let's put

you in a studio let's put some auto-tune

on you

[Music]

got to make sure that you look good so

we can

put your picture on the album cover or

nowadays and not even album cover

anymore and

now we got to put your picture on the

internet we got to put a picture on a

billboard we got to sell

you we got to sell the way you look yeah

so we can sell records yeah i mean

what i mean you mentioned electronic

music and

really you know some of the indie music

the alternative music which came out of

england

uh bands like new order uh

you know really kind of pioneered a lot

of that electronic

music while still remaining good

musicians but then it kind of

took a bit of a strange curve i mean

when

you know acid house music and rave music

came around which i think was basically

you know somebody taking lsd while

playing pac-man and thought

oh you know what i'm going to remix this

about 90 different ways and then charge

people 80

80 to stand in the wet field and dance

to it with glow sticks

i mean that kind of went on for about

two three years but yeah but

but once again why not yeah you know we

we all got to feed ourselves right yeah

we all got to drink water we all got to

feed ourselves we all got to put a roof

over our head yeah

so they figured out a way to do this

fairly easily

yeah and it's a you know

one in a million i'm gonna go with one

in a million it's a one in a million

shot that you're going to create a song

you're going to create

a band or whatever and you're going to

make it and you're going to pay the

bills that way

yeah now one of the funny things or

maybe ironic things about

certain genres is the audience that

they're really aimed at

in terms of where the companies make

their money and i mean rap music

rap music in particular and i mean you

know for as long as that's

now being kind of popular or at least

makes up a certain

percentage you know the songs which are

sold on itunes the songs which make

you know maybe the billboard charts you

know the the marketing is aimed towards

kind of

10 through 12 year old white middle

class

girls it's not aimed you know black kids

it's not aimed at black teenagers black

adults

the marketing in terms of where those

adverts appear for those albums and

everything else

is middle class you know pre-teen girls

and you know again i think going back to

and

you know auntie nora and her penchant

for you know not really making much

effort in terms of birthday and

christmas ideas and giving out

itunes gift cards has led to this market

of pre-teen girls having

almost unrivaled power in the music

industry now to actually drive

that music well it if you

also look at the way songs are now it's

better for a song to be short so going

back to

november rain i don't know how long that

song is i

i want to say it's like seven minutes

long you know

it it's a long song now it's all about

the tick tock video

yeah uh it's all about getting that

little

snippet of 30 seconds or whatever

of the hook of the song or the chorus of

the song to

to go ahead and throw that out there so

you can make a

tick tock video or instagram reels or

you know whatever it is versus

sitting back and actually listening to

the song listening to the message of the

song

and enjoying the song well i think it i

think it's a crazy thing especially when

you listen to a lot of

you know hip-hop rap lyrics and then

examine the kind of market it's mostly

aimed at in terms of its

commercialization where it's getting the

money from i mean

you're generally talking about an age

group

who in between baby shark and eating

chick-fil-a

you know are listening to this music

which is completely inappropriate you

know for their age group and they're

watching videos with

you know people twerking on it and i

mean you know i i don't think it's

appropriate for you know

10 year old girls i don't care what race

you are or anything

watching these videos and seeing their

stuff and yet

this music is deliberately marked to

them i mean we should probably contact

netflix there's a documentary in there

somewhere else

probably so and let's not forget

years ago they didn't want to show elvis

presley

on tv yeah when he shook his hips that

was

that was something that wasn't able to

be televised

yeah now you have uh songs and i don't

even want to

repeat the name but i'm just going to

say the initials wap

right and i've read the lyrics i've

watched the video and i thought to

myself

my god if my parents heard me

listening to that song and watching the

video

everything would just crash down but

last year we said hey

we can't play the song baby it's cold

outside

right because there there's an

intonation

about a man controlling a woman and

maybe some rape intonation something

like that i said it was a bit rapey

yeah and and then i hear the

wap song and i'm thinking wow

that song's okay but baby it's cold

outside

isn't and i'm thinking about poor old

will ferrell

and zooey deschanel when they sang that

song in elf

right obviously if they'd have made elf

during this they wouldn't have ever done

that and that was a funny scene

with them singing that and and now you

can't sing

that song right wow well well i mean

that's

that song the wap song um

i obviously know what those letters

stand for

but before that song come out

i mean i i think would have had as much

difficulty

trying to find uh links to something

describing that on the internet as we

have with

gay asian disco because it to be honest

i mean the phrase doesn't really make

any sense

no but it's just one of those things

that it's controversial for

you know controversies sake and that's

how it kind of gets popular

you know i mean there was a there was a

popular meme which was circulating on

the internet when they banned

you know uh the baby it's cold outside

and it had a radio producer or a

dj whatever saying hey sorry we're not

allowed to play baby it's cold outside

anymore but it's a uh this next record

it's cardi b

inviting everybody to eat her butt right

you know yeah crazy yeah i mean it just

goes it's great

but what you think when we went back

actually to our smith's podcast

and music go uh we talked about whether

music's pretty much

dead in terms of creativity now because

it's so

overproduced and it's so over

commercialized that there seems to be

very little popular music or in terms of

what sells

that you know is actually artists

driving it themselves it's all

people behind the scenes from getting

the people to perform the music and

that's how they make the money that

doesn't seem like there's that many

real bands coming through on the

mainstream anymore

no i i totally agree i i think you're

always gonna have the bands that are

still going to produce their music

they're going to be true underground

because

if you look at how music is now

any genre outside of what's popular

is truly driven underground yeah

and it there used to always be the

underground

and now i think it's more so

underground than it has ever been

and it it's kind of like drinking a beer

and you used to you would say hey have

you ever tried

this beer and somebody would say well

i've heard of it but i haven't tried it

and now that you have all these

different beers that are out there

it's hard to even ask hey have you tried

this beer from this brewery in podunk

texas because everybody's making a beer

yeah

it conversely now you have

all these bands that are truly forced

underground it's kind of that same thing

that if you say

hey have you heard this song by this

band

most people haven't even heard of the

band haven't heard of the song

but it's opening up a

area that people can actually kind of

focus on the artist they they can say

hey i

i like what these guys are doing i i

like their

music that they're making i will support

them all

i'll buy their vinyl there's a

band that i just bought their vinyl

that is from new york they're a ska band

and i accidentally found them

and i've been listening to them on

spotify

and once they released a vinyl i said

you know what

i'm gonna go ahead and buy this vinyl to

support

these guys i don't know if they're ever

gonna

come down to texas and and play a show

but

i want to support them because i like

their music

right well i think i think the great

thing now

is there are so many different channels

of distribution and ways for you to

discover a band because i mean before

the internet

you would probably have never discovered

that band but you know getting rid of

the record label as a middleman taking

out those costs what it used to

cost to put out a single you know it was

very very difficult to raise that money

um but but i think you know a lot of the

new bands which come out

it really does have to be the old

equivalent of the word of

mouth you know you have to really seek

out some of these bands i think it's

harder now with the saturation

in the market and it is so easy to make

music

and distribute music that you know

getting your voice heard in the crowd

you have to be either

very very successful or be sorry not

very successful

be maybe very lucky to get your success

or be very very good i mean

because you have to remember we're now

we now have a market for the first time

in history

where the majority of the people who buy

this music have adhd and adderall prices

are through the roof so i mean you know

the genre no not that you can really

call much of the music nowadays in the

billboard

you know 100 a genre because it seems to

be like you've heard one song you've

heard the next 30 songs

you know in the charts absolutely true

yeah absolutely true now now you

subscribe to spotify

i do so i i thought i thought first of

all you did it because you were sick of

your daughter buying

every release that taylor swift did not

because you actually wanted

well so so i have a family plan on

spotify

and the reason i did that was because my

wife

and my daughter kept spending money

on songs on itunes you know yeah

whatever it is 99

cents a song or whatever knowing

that after three months they're not

gonna listen

to that song and they were trying to

build their

playlist their library or whatever and i

said well

wouldn't it be better if we just went

ahead and

had a spotify account and had a family

account which is what we have

and then you can listen to whatever you

want

whenever you want you can download stuff

to your phone

if that's what you want so you can play

it offline

and have every song you want

versus paying 99 cents a song

and you know what you you get a 25

gift card from itunes and you end up

with

23 songs let's say

it and that's all you've got yeah why

not

go ahead and have access to a huge music

library versus you know my

cd folder in my wife's cd folder and my

vinyl collection and everything else

i mean i have the songs i want to listen

to

on you know cd or vinyl or

whatever but of course spotify is

so much more convenient yeah i can

listen to it on my computer i can listen

to it on my phone

uh not the greatest quality but

you know unless you're having that

moment

where you just want to sit back and hear

the quality

and you just want some background noise

yeah now i mean why not do it that way

yeah i mean it feels like

itunes and the google music services

have

um been you know haven't really been

around that long

but you know can you see services like

spotify

and you know their competitors really

kind of almost killing off itunes and

you know the google music theme because

obviously no longer you have to pay for

an individual song or an album

you can pay one subscription a month for

less than the cost of an album

and access pretty much every song well

of course

you know itunes shifted to apple music

yeah and and that's what they're trying

to focus everything on then you have

amazon music several of those

options you have title which is a great

service it's a little overpriced but

it's more for the audio file

because the the quality is so much

higher

right on that uh but that's where we're

going now

yeah it's all music on demand we

live in an on-demand world uh

we've talked on prior podcasts about

going to

blockbuster and trying to rent a movie

and most people can't even imagine the

fact that they can't

click a button on their tv and watch a

movie immediately

and it's the same with music they they

want what they want

they want it right now and it's the same

with music

right now now you did mention i can't

remember which specific

podcast it was you mentioned about

vinyl sales in the last 12 18 months

actually surpassed that cds it has it

and i i love the fact that vinyl has

surpassed cds

uh never was a cd fan never was a

cassette fan

uh i always thought

once cds came out because i remember

getting a cd

in a cd player and then realizing i

could

also put that cd in my computer

and play that cd and i thought well

why do i have to do this when i can

connect my computer to the internet

why do i need this disk and i always

thought

there's going to be a digital version of

this it's going to take a while but

eventually it's going to happen and and

here we are

and now it's happened now um i haven't

noticed and this might sound like a

really ignorant question

but do they still sell cds in stores

i don't know because i can't i don't i

i'm not necessarily sure that it's

because

i either don't keep an eye out or i just

never go to those sections anymore where

they might sell music in stores like

walmart target wherever

i would have to say yes and

the only reason i say yes is because

over the weekend

the wife and i went hunting for

cheap halloween candy because of course

you know once halloween passes and all

the candy companies

put halloween candy out you know they

they put a

halloween graphic or whatever on it it's

the same candy it's just a different

wrapper

then we always go out and we try to buy

the candy cheaper

to give to the kids and as we were going

through the store

uh we were at target which is

uh one of our sunday sevens super tired

or just regular uh regular target no we

went to a regular target

i walked by a display

of dvds and i thought

okay well they're still selling movies

on dvd

they probably still have cds right

but i didn't go into the music section

and actually look

right so i i think they're still out

there

i think they are yeah now now i can

understand that

you know with movies that were produced

and they either

over pressed a certain number of copies

of movies you know these old movies

which is why

you know they appear in bargain buckets

and stuff because it's like

yeah we still have you know 19 million

copies of this movie

which didn't sell so they stick them in

bargain buckets you know just as a kind

of stop loss whatever and like let's try

and sell it but i don't understand now

you know especially well maybe in the

united states or

the uk why anybody would

you know or a record company not a

specific individual band

would make that effort to actually get

something released on

cd and have that extra cost in terms of

manufacturing distribution

when obviously electronic you know

methods

of you know receiving that music

you know is the way to go because i mean

why would you have that overhead and

lose money when you can just sell it

electronically

right it totally makes no sense to me

especially with the books being print on

demand

you could argue the fact that if

somebody loved a movie enough

and they wanted a dvd that you could

create that on demand and ship it to

them

right not quite sure why anybody would

want to

but you know maybe they would yeah

i i think we're not quite

a hundred percent digital yet so

that's why you still have that floating

out there because

a movie is a little bit different than

music so you're

you're not gonna have obviously a vinyl

record of a movie because

listening to vinyl with music is a

whole experience yeah it's all about

that experience

but i mean it's moved to the point where

even the older generations are getting

more and more educated on

how they can get digital downloads i

mean like you know if you take your dad

as an example i mean

you know he's somebody who's still his

idea of a barbecue is

going in the field at night and hitting

a cow over the head with the spade and

setting fire to it and

that's barbecue bar but after

after he does that he also goes inside

and brings up

so i mean that's why that's why i find

it so hard

to understand why these mediums still

exist you know

dvds see well actually like i said i can

understand with dvd to a point because

they printed too many and they're just

trying to sell them and you know for

whatever reason their accountant didn't

do a good job of being able to write

them off as a loss but with

new music which comes out

you know cds i mean unless you own a car

from like

you know what the end of the 80s

i don't understand what medium you'd

even conveniently

play those on anymore yeah i remember

way back in the day installing a 6-disc

cd

changer in the trunk of my car thinking

that was amazing that i could put six

cds

in the truck yeah yeah of the car

and then i could control that from my

radio

and i could actually have six cds and

then of course

you know fast forward we had a six cd

changer

in the dash of one of our cars and

we thought that was great and now

we just bluetooth our phone into it and

stream from spotify

yeah i mean i haven't you know bought

song or an album in

i don't know maybe five or six years and

that's mainly because you know the bit

torrent platforms kind of force me

against my will to download music for

free

but outside of services like spotify

iheartradio and the other ones you

mentioned earlier i'm not sure i could

justify spending that money now because

if i wanted an album

i'd be stupid not to sign up for spotify

for a month's

free trial or doing whatever and you

you also have to remember that and of

course once again

i haven't bought a cd in a very long

time but

i'm gonna guess if you went to the store

and you could actually buy a cd it's

gonna be

somewhere around 10 15 bucks right

that's the monthly subscription rate to

spotify

do you remember when they shot up from

like ten dollars to fifteen dollars cds

at once

by the way no it it actually went up

more than that depending

on the the cd because it was all about

the artwork and everything

and and that's that's why i like vinyl

because you get the big

huge piece of artwork you know you get

the colored vinyl

which i know audiophiles are going to

say colored vinyl doesn't sound as good

as black vinyl and all that

and once again another rabbit hole black

matters

but if you look at a piece of vinyl

in the way the package is put together

and you're sitting there and you're

holding that and you're sitting in your

chair

and you're you know you hear that

crackle

when you put the needle down and and you

play the record

that's an experience right and it's the

same as going to a live music show yeah

that not not necessarily the exact same

but it's as close as you're gonna get

because you're having that intimate

connection with the music

versus just having something playing in

the background on your phone

when you're mowing the grass and you

need something to listen to because you

hate mowing the grass because

mowing the grass sucks worse than living

in canada

yeah but what i mean you actually kind

of stole my thunder and peed over my

parade there a little bit because i was

going to say

oh sorry pretty much pretty much the

same thing but in india well that's what

well that's what we get from researching

yes but

i mean you are more of an audiophobe

than i am in terms of

the you know you do value that

experience with vinyl and it is an

experience i don't think anybody could

ever really

look yeah let's let's be honest putting

in a cd is an expert

but but going back to you know we did a

podcast on this mess yeah and you've

been over at my house

and sat with my vinyl setup and listened

to the smiths on

vinyl even though you have the hat full

hollow on vinyl but

for you you hanging on the wall you

don't you don't actually

listen to the record right and i have

i think four either four or five smith's

records and you've sat there and you've

even admitted it sounds so much better

yeah

sure yeah i mean because i think it's an

exact

i think there's something with vinyl it

just brings up the rawness

of a band going into the studio and

recording it whereas

you know i think when it moved to cd the

quality

even though it was you know somewhat

digital

never really compared to violin and even

now when you download

you know the different formats of songs

that it never really recreates that

connection you have with the band when

you listen to it

digitally if gay

asian disco comes out

are they gonna have to release all their

music on vinyl

well i don't know if we have the time to

put it out on vinyl to be honest

yeah it's gonna be difficult well i mean

it sounds like a lot of work well i

think

we're gonna have to run another

competition with this and i think um

if anybody wants to put together any

tracks that we can contribute to our new

record label

um for this new genre and we've decided

to call it

gaijin records which i think kind of

asian

gaysian gaijin listen to being creative

gaijin wrestlers right

yeah they email trademark yeah if they

email us at thewolfenshepard.com

sorry wolf and shepard gmail.com

and they send it to us we will

absolutely 100

put it on our facebook page and you know

when we do this

album the freshman release of now that's

what i call gaijin

volume one it will make it will make the

cup

so so do you realize the amount

of work you're creating here we are so

lazy

and now we're gonna have to run a record

label for gay asian disco

well i was thinking more about the

t-shirt sales because if there's that

many

of that many asians in the world and you

take the percentage of how many of them

may or may not be gay

i was thinking the merchandise just like

every other band we were talking about

the other day they're making money from

touring and merchandise

and of course this is where we're going

to make the money we're going to create

this band that

probably can't tour but we could create

a merch

for them yeah i like i like the way this

is going there's got to be a

equivalent of a gay asian disco version

of john travolta from saturday night

fever out there somewhere

who is going to break through and we

together you and i

are going to be responsible for making

them massive that is a lot of

responsibility it is i

i don't know if i can i can hold that

might be more pressure

that might be bad

so what what's um

if you had to really push a musical

style that you honestly think

would be big in 10 years time

do you think there's anything now

whatsoever

that will come out of almost nowhere or

do you think

genres new genres are absolutely dead i

think they're dead

you think they're dead there'll be no

more creativity and

it's just a repeat and a rehash of

what's come before

yeah and new genres are dead i think

they're

dead i totally think they're dead

uh it's sad to think about that

that that it's dead yeah but i

i just i don't see it happening

yeah you're gonna get some wrinkles

you're gonna get some cover songs

in different genres i i

i remember watching a video from i think

it was

uh jimmy fallon that was uh gwen stefani

playing her songs when she was in no

doubt

in a country version and listening to

that thinking

you know i remember when gwen stefani

was in no doubt

uh back when i thought she had good

music

in listening to her you know sing them

in a country version yeah uh

it but we're at the bottom of the barrel

it's kind of like hollywood with movies

and we keep

yeah keep doing uh

we uh doing sequels we keep doing all

that

the the creative people are

running out of ideas and and it scares

me

yeah i i

think we're done i i just don't see it

well well i

i i agree with you and going back to

that one of our very first podcasts

when we covered the smiths and morrissey

that

we talked about there are so many

different versions of

early smith songs like there is a light

that never goes out

that it doesn't matter which band sings

it even if you're not necessarily a fan

of that band

that that song still sounds good i don't

think

there's maybe been more than a handful

of songs in the last 10 years

which different bands could sing which

would still

sound good i think music is

almost dead in terms of creativity it's

just

purely now about the monster machine of

marketing

and instant money it's the

the hook it's the

the short youtube video uh

you're gonna see shorter songs it it's

gonna be about the shock value

that's all that's left but we are gonna

make a guy asian disco version of baby

shark though right you know

when we started this podcast i would

have told you that

we are not getting in the gay asian

disco

business but maybe it's our

responsibility

as people that love music that we have

to make this happen

it's gonna suck i mean we we're actually

gonna have to do some work

which probably means we're not gonna do

it but

we'll at least talk about it for i don't

know what

five ten minutes yeah and then decide

that

it isn't gonna happen but

with all that said thank you for tuning

in to this episode of the wolf and the

shepherd we certainly appreciate

all of y'all's support that y'all have

given us

and we'll catch you on the next one