In the beginning of the year I wrote a blog post (Absolute zero) about one of the few remaining second hand record stores in Stockholm, read more here (opens in a new window). It wasn't just about any store. It was about Skivbörsen, established in 1971. Skivbörsen has been closed since March 2020 due to covid-19. On June 28th 2021 the store was re-opened. That's really surprising news. I never thought that it would resurrect. Not after being closed for a so long time. Skivbörsen is divided into three sections. You enter the store through a half staircase. It's not suitable for people with accessibility needs. In the beginning the store was only 10 square metres (placed on the left side of the staircase). Today, it's more of a storage room for cds which are less in demand. The store quickly expanded on the right side of the staircase (a former toy store). From this larger part of the store there's a narrow spiral staircase leading down to the cellar. Personally, I haven't been down there since the 1970s. But, it's a goldmine if you have the time and energy to excavate the gems. Not much have changed over the years including the original interior. The first owner was a bit odd and didn't trust some of the customers. He installed a low tech surveillance system of mirrors and monitored the business from a small box-room. The present owner took over the store in the mid-1990s. Skivbörsen is a wonderful establishment for cds and vinyls. However, if you're a house dust allergy sufferer this isn't a healthy place to be. A good record store normally has order and structure. Skivbörsen gives the concept of chaos a new and deeper meaning. On the other hand, the supply is unmatched and prices are very moderate. The society is slowly opening up again. The re-opening is a prime example of survival instinct and endurance. Welcome back Skivbörsen!!! 

I grew up with the "Big 3"; Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin ringing in my ears. Most people regard Led Zeppelin II and Led Zeppelin IV as Zep's finest moments. Not only because of the content, but also in terms of the album art. I like "II" and "IV", but it was actually "Presence" that I played over and over again. The songs "Achilles Last Stand", "For Your Life" and "Nobody’s Fault But Mine" stand out. The album cover also stood out. It was perceived as "weird". The album art was designed by no less than Hipgnosis, read more here (opens in a new window). Hipgnosis was also behind the "Houses of the Holy" album cover. Allegedly, the band came up with the title "Presence" after seeing the images that were presented as front/back covers and gatefold images. Yeah, right but it's a good story. The album cover is a bit out of character. There's no natural connection between an epic hard rock band in the 1970s and a nice and tidy suburban, middle-class family in the 1950s. The album art was designed by graphic designer Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell together with George Hardie. The background in the cover photograph is an artificial marina, installed in London's Earl's Court arena for the annual Boat Show, in the winter of 1974–75. The inner sleeve photographs came from various archive stock pictures, and was designed to resemble a feature in Time Magazine or National Geographic. The album contains ten photographs of a nuclear family contemplating a black object, an obelisk. "The Object" neither casts a shadow nor reflects any light and has a commanding presence. Well, nothing was too pretentious in the 1970s. "The Object" seems to create a divide; a Kubrickian monolith or a Spinal Tap mini-Stonehenge? "The Object" was also used for promotion purposes, read an insightful article here (opens in a new window). Today, you would have to pay about $2000 for an original. A copy is cheaper, about $40. I wouldn't mind an original object on the window sill. Original will always beat copy. In music as well as in art.          

Some wishes never come true. For instance, a long-awaited album filled with great expectations. In my annual blog entry "What to expect and wish for in..." I have had the same wish for five years in a row: a new album from The Victor Mourning. The first years were not very encouraging and no sign of activity, but then a glimpse of hope followed. The band members were located in Austin again, playing and recording for a new album. And then came the pandemic. On June 1st 2021 they wrote on Facebook: "These past few years have been a time of tremendous change for everyone, and we’re no exception. As we emerge from a year of isolation, we’ve decided to change our band name to reflect the direction we’ve been heading in for some time now. We’re pleased to announce that the band that began its life as The Victor Mourning is now Swarme of Beese. (Of course, there’s a story behind the new name, but we’ll save that for later.) You’ll still recognize the stripped-down underpinnings of our acoustic hillbilly noir sound, but you might also notice a bit more texture and an extra layer of psychedelic folk among our wide-ranging influences. More than ever, the songs meander off from the main roads and through dark paths in the backwoods, to the eerie places where boundaries between the real and the imaginal disappear. A source close to the band has described the sound as “hillbillies who got lost on their way to the moonshine still and stumbled upon some mushrooms.” Our first order of business is to finish recording the album we started before COVID struck, and to get those captured sound waves pressed into grooves of glorious vinyl later this year. There’s a strong likelihood that we’ll play a live show or two when it’s released. We hope you’ll join us on this journey, and maybe even take a moment to “like” our new page, where we’ll keep you updated as things progress. As always, we deeply appreciate your support! — Stephen, Lynne, & Stefan".  Well, my The Victor Mourning-wish will never come true. But, things could be a lot worse, like if Stephen, Lynne, & Stefan would call it quits. I will replace my old TVM-wish with an album from Swarme of Beese. However, I prefer cd over vinyl.   

I hate streaming. One reason is the crappy sound quality. TIDAL think they are better. They offer something called MQA (Master Quality Authenticated). MQA is an audio codec using lossy compression (irreversible compression). This encoding method uses inexact approximations and partial data discarding to represent the content. This is opposed to lossless data compression (reversible data compression), which does not degrade the data. Why doesn't TIDAL offer lossless? The reason is that storage is money. Naturally, the amount of data reduction possible using lossy compression is much higher than using lossless techniques. MQA annoy audiophiles. Neil Young removed his music from the platform in January 2021. "TIDAL is calling their files of my songs Masters. But TIDAL’s MQA files are not my masters. I make my masters - not TIDAL. I made my masters the way I wanted them to sound. If TIDAL referred to their titles as TIDAL MASTERS, I would have no problem, but they don’t. They call them Masters. I had my music removed from that platform. They are not my masters." Neil Young isn't just a grumpy old man, he is also an advocate for audio quality, read more here (opens in a new window). The MQA hype is surrounded by a smokescreen. Not even its creators can explain the MQA technique. It's a lot of nonsense like "temporal deblurring", using digtal signal processing to tamper with the original sonics of the recording. Let's take the abbreviation MQA and break it down into pieces. It's not "Master". "Quality" is debatable and open for interpretation. "Authenticated" is questionable. Any media labeled as MQA under Tidal means that it was directly authenticated by the artist for use with this standard. Well, for sure Neil Young didn't give his approval. MQA is available with the $19.99/month subscription (Hifi). This is a hefty sum. Especially considering that FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) is free. The choice is yours to make.

Spotify has published their final accounts for 2020. It's a brutal reading. Spotify has been in the red, a business that is operating at a loss, from day one. But, now the colour of the ink used by accountants has turned into glaring red. The Spotify owners faced losses of biblical proportions. Operating loss amounted to €293m ($335 m). The pre-tax loss amounted to €709m ($810m), no less than five times the equivalent loss in 2019. Net loss amounted to €581m ($664) due to a huge income tax benefit of €128m ($146m). In any other business share price would drop like a stone, but this is cloud cuckoo land. The share price has more than doubled in 2020. The business model is built upon providing digital rights management-protected content from record labels and media companies. That makes Spotify vulnerable. The company is dependent on the revenues that subscribers pay and on the music companies from which it licences content. When revenues increase, so do costs. Spotify are caught between a rock and a hard place. The conversion strategy (by providing freemium, users will upgrade to premium) is an error in cognition. After more than 10 years the share of paying users is still below 50 percent. According to the annual report 2020 the company has about 155 million paying (premium) users (of a total of 345 million users), which makes 45 percent (the premium share was actually higher in 2019 and 2018, 46 percent). In any other business dismissal of top management, hard restructuring and merciless cost reduction would follow. Not in cloud cuckoo land. Instead, it's headless expansion ahead. Spotify’s sales and marketing expenditure surpassed a billon for the first time ever in 2020, €1 029m ($1 176m). And what is the right move from the co-founder and CEO Daniel Ek? He wants to buy Arsenal FC. A good opportunity to fulfil a boyhood dream and burn money like a Russian oligarch. The net worth of Daniel Ek is no less than 3.7 billion dollars. The show will go on. The investors are waiting for their return of investment. The enormous losses will continue until the investors loses their patience. Sooner or later they will understand it's time to put the brakes on the expansion. The strategy has always been growth over profit. In the real world it has to be profit over growth. Some believe in webeconomics (new and unproven economic theory). I don't. I believe in science and gravity. What goes up must come down. The standard annual report disclaimer "Our historical results for any prior period are not necessarily indicative of results expected in any future period" is out of place. Their historical results are a very good predictor of future results. The forecast for 2021? More losses are expected. It's the final accountdown.