I Can't Believe I'm Writing About James Blake (Again)
a.k.a. Yes, I have some thoughts on the new Vault platform.
As you’ve almost certainly seen by now, last week James Blake announced that he would be partnering with Vault, a new subscription-based platform which allows artists to directly share music and information with their fans—or, more specifically, thier fans who are willing to pay $5 per month.
In the days since then, the internet has been absolutely flooded with James Blake takes, many of them highly critical of both the artist and the new platform he’s promoting. I’ve personally received multiple messages from First Floor readers on the matter, most of them saying something along the lines of, “I can’t wait to hear your take on the James Blake thing.” After all, I previously wrote an entire essay when Blake unleashed a series of posts about the negative impact of streaming and social media on the music industry, and now that he’s unveiled Vault—something he’d previously teased as a “nice solution” to the problem—it does make sense to do some sort of follow-up.
Here’s the thing though: I’m not sure that I really have all that much to add to the conversation. Until the world sees how Vault actually performs—and which artists beyond James Blake decide to take part in the platform—it’s difficult to make any definitive pronouncements.
Watching this situation unfold in recent days, I’ve repeatedly found myself wondering if James Blake anticipated the torrent of shit that’s been thrown his way. While I’m sure he’ll be fine in the long run, the onslaught of jokes, memes, insults and diatribes that have surfaced during last week likely represents the biggest black mark on his reputation to date, which is pretty ironic considering that the whole incident stemmed from what one hopes is his genuine desire to help artists.
Of course, given the highly cynical nature of online conversation, even Blake’s motives have been called into question, with plenty of people immediately assuming that Vault simply dumped a pile of money in his lap. Some folks have even suggested that his initial volley of streaming tweets was a pre-planned marketing ploy designed to lay the groundwork for the Vault launch. There’s no proof of any of that—not that it matters much in our increasingly conjecture-filled public discourse—but it didn’t help that in the aftermath of the Vault announcement, internet sleuths quickly unearthed—and got Blake to confirm—that the platform is owned by the same VC-backed parent company as music NFT outlet sound.xyz.
Personally, I’d like to think that James Blake is being sincere. At the same time, I do think he oversold Vault’s potential, and whether that was intentional or not, the platform is definitely not a “solution”—more on that word later—to the many ways that streaming and social media have turned the music industry upside down.
Want a detailed breakdown of Vault’s various shortcomings? Peter Kirn put together a pretty savage analysis for Create Digital Music, while Cherie Hu penned a more measured—but still rather critical—breakdown for Water & Music. I’m not going to rehash their all of their arguments here, and seeing as how the last James Blake record I genuinely liked came out in 2010, I’m hesitant to give the man even more attention. But I’ve already come this far, and with this topic still dominating the music conversation, I figure that I may as well share a few of my thoughts on the matter.
(I’m sorry.)