Music Review // Talia Keys "From The Ashes"
If you asked me what I thought one of the biggest problems in music is, I would say that it's artists not being compensated fairly. There seems to be this 1% on Spotify that makes the most money and for many artists they just don't seem to be making enough money. Even Bandcamp is taking money off of the top, so I've always wondered about a way that artists could be paid for their music. Enter Buy Before You Stream, which is dedicated to releasing music on vinyl and giving 100% the money to the artists. A lot of times digital albums will be available first with the physical shipping later on, but this takes it the other way and is actually the best way to buy music since everything went digital.
Though "From The Ashes" will eventually be available digitally, one of the biggest struggles with having the physical release first is that people want a way to listen to the music before buying it because that's the way we have been conditioned since the dawn of Napster. Bringing that emphasis back to the music and reassuring listeners that if you do in fact buy this as a record before hearing the full seven songs is well worth your money and actually better for everyone overall is someone that might take some time for listeners to get used to, but in the long run it will keep a lot of the better music out there alive.
There may not be a better way to kick off this Buy Before You Stream concept than Talia Keys. If the lead single "Matchstick" isn't enough to draw you into that blues fused rock n roll sound that can just feel like a warm hug on a cold day, you can also stream other songs by Talia Keys that aren't on "From The Ashes". A collection of seven songs which brings us such lyrics as "Even though I've been a lot of places / I know what that look on your place is", this becomes a 1950's type of dreamy rock n roll / gospel which I feel ultimately becomes a sound which only Talia Keys can claim. "From The Ashes" is definitely an essential rock n roll album which is best appreciated through vinyl.
I've often wondered what it would be like if we went back to the time before recorded music, where if you wanted to experience the sound of an artist you had to do it live and in person. While this isn't going back that far, it does make me feel more like going to a record store and buying an album physically. If albums were out there in a physical way and they included a download code and that was really the only way to have them digitally I think a lot of things for the artists would be better. But so long as we're in this wanting everything immediately age of social media, Buy Before You Stream is doing the best to keep artists from ultimately going away and the quality of music is better for it.
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