It’s fairly well-established that the once-promising budgeting and bank aggregation site Mint has become terrible. A cursory read through the Google results for “mint.com sucks” reads like a litany of first-world financial suffering – inaccessible data, inaccurate data, almost no official support, etc.

We’re used to our web experiences getting better, not worse, over time. Seemingly every day, Google releases another mind-blowing web platform that upends an entire industry. And the products are actually good, so these success stories make sense. In light of this, it’s interesting to examine the failures.

With the benefit of hindsight, some of the spectacular crashes of the first dot-com bust were hilarious. (Anyone remember flooz.com?) It was apparently possible to get venture funding for even the most self-evidently bad ideas.

But Mint is fundamentally a fantastic idea, and actually could be amazing. Early on, they rolled out a great looking and highly functional aggregation tool, and even have a seemingly reasonable revenue model: based on an analysis of your accounts, they show you offers from vendors offering competing products (and take some sort of kickback if you sign up). It was certainly good enough to kill off a number of potentially interesting competitors early on.

Then they got bought by Quicken. The rest is history. The quality of the data and support began to drop almost immediately. What never lagged, however, was development of the revenue model. Even now, at the apex of customer outrage on their official support channels, the latest update to Mint’s iPhone app introduced…partner offers.

Who’s to blame when good internet companies go bad? I have some theories:

1. The customer is to blame. Users of web platforms are quick to buy into the illusion that they’re using free products. This is a fallacy. Web platforms are free in the same sense that network television is free; you pay in time spent being exposed to advertising. In the case of Mint, this is literal advertising – you see offers from partners. In the case of Facebook, Google, etc., the payment is more subtle. It is not your eyes but rather your data that is exposed to advertising. This doesn’t cost you time up front but you can be sure that you have something that is worth money to vendors somewhere. Because we trick ourselves into believing these tools are free, we feel less entitled to quality.

Customers: resist. Web tools are a product, just like a tangible good. If they break, complain – loudly and publicly. If this doesn’t fix it, use a different tool. There are alternatives everywhere, for everything.

2. The web platform provider is to blame. Cheered on by duped users who believe they’re getting shiny internet toys for “free,” web platform providers can easily be insulated from the need to add actual value.

Web platform providers: resist. You make things. If they break, fix them. Go home at the end of the day proud of the good thing you made, not the money you made from it. Good things are more important (and, as Google should have taught you by now, lead to more money in the end anyway).

It’s not too late for Mint. Maybe they’ll get smart, start working on functionality again and fix everything they’ve neglected. But they’ll only get there if their users start voting for quality.

This is my vote.

This monkey programs e-commerce plugins. (CC by pathfinderlinden )

Things that should be fixed now (but will probably still suck in other ways) include:

1. Random reformatting of everything. This was, I think, my favorite part of the previous design. Menus, sidebars etc. would just magically move around the page. This would happen even without me doing any editing. It certainly kept things interesting if by “interesting” you mean “the worst thing that ever happened.”
2. Store not working in Internet Explorer. For reasons which will never be known, my score store simply stopped working for customers using Internet Explorer. Browsing, cart loading, etc. all worked. Purchasing did not. This seems to be fixed now, but if you try to order something and are inadvertently charged nine hundred dollars, please let me know. (Sidenote: if there is any e-commerce platform for selling digital downloads that wasn’t designed by terrible, terrible people, I’d love to know about it. I’ve tried many solutions now and they’re all unspeakably awful. The one I’m using now is certainly not good; it’s just the least awful.)
3. Utter busyness. This is no one’s fault but mine. For some reason, I decided last time around that there should be all kinds of stuff everywhere – sidebars, navigation, featured posts, kittens, etc. But then I realized that good websites stopped looking like that in the 90s, so I’m chilling out.

Where's Zankel's stage door? I'm already 19 years late for my concert!

My friends Matt Marks and Brian Sacawa have been kicking out articles over the past few days in response to a fairly contentious piece on eighth blackbird’s blog. Topics under discussion include:

1. Is classical music still “relevant?”
2. Is the new “alt-classical” movement a revolution or just a fad?

As with seemingly all art music vs. pop discussions, the participants neatly sort themselves into two camps: there are the High Art Purists, who see a great and necessary divide between (and I’m paraphrasing here) “the direct, communicative power of art music” and “the mob mentality behind all that drivel the kids listen to.” And then there are the Cultural Relativists, who talk about the depth, breadth and variety of their iPod playlists in the same entirely unironic sentence that they all talk about how much they like Radiohead, Björk and Sigur Rós.

What both parties seem to agree on, however, is how important things like “complexity” and “craft” and “classical rigor” are to making great music. Thank God they can at least agree on that, right?

Sorry, but no. Every argument here is jive because the discussion itself is jive. Let’s take a walk, shall we?:

Is classical music still “relevant?”

What does “relevant” even mean here? Relevant to whom? Relevant for what? I suspect that the people asking this question think that the word is somehow loaded with meaning (in the “nudge nudge wink wink” sense) but I honestly have no idea what’s being asked. Is a concert ticket that costs $50 relevant to a person who lives off of food stamps? Is a gig at a bar relevant to a kid who’s under 21? Of course, the answer is no. But is Mahler relevant to a person who loves Mahler? Of course, the answer is yes.

Maybe the question is about whether or not we have some sort of cultural obligation to preserve classical music, either through government funding or corporate sponsorship. If classical music is “relevant” to the greater good of the culture, then it’s easy to make a case that it deserves some kind of support. Suspiciously, the people who fight for this tend to have something to gain by having a wide array of grant applications at their disposal. But can we honestly make this argument in a cultural climate that can’t even recognize that health care is worth government support? Let’s get our priorities straight.

So, the answer to “is classical music still relevant” is “I don’t understand the question, but I suspect you have an agenda.”

Is the new “alt-classical” movement a revolution or just a fad?

First of all, If you love this music, you should work to keep the name “alternative” as far away from it as possible. Alternative used to mean Rage Against the Machine. Later, it meant Limp Bizkit. Is that an admirable trajectory? Today, alt-classical means Alarm Will Sound. Tomorrow, will it mean Bond? It’s very easy (and often very profitable) to take something that gained credibility for being other and monetize it by taking things that are not other and dressing them up as other.

Secondly, here’s a relevant and timely quote on the issue:

The traditional boundaries of genre, intended audience, “culture,” have been so thoroughly crossed that even when you try it’s impossible to take a cohesive stand toward any particular piece of music.

It’s relevant because it was written by Evan Ziporyn, who’s certainly one of the major players in this music. It’s timely because it was written about the current state of affairs. Oh, wait. It was written in 1991.

[Update: Evan has now entered the discussion himself on his own blog.]

There’s nothing new about alt-classical. (There, I used it myself. See what you made me do?) Bang on a Can has been playing this music for more than twenty years. The 90s “Downtown” scene was all about classically-trained cats letting their pop music upbringing come out in their music, and throwing off the shackles of their “Uptown” training. What’s suspicious is that the people who keep asking questions about the “new alt-classical” are well aware of this recent history. What’s the motivation here?

(By the way, do student composers in 2010 seriously still need to defend their pop music influences to their professors? I would suggest that any student in this position needs to consider finding a different professor. There’s nothing pedagogically sound in telling young composers to ignore what inspires them.)

Finally, and perhaps most contentiously, I take issue with the one thing that the High Art Purists and Cultural Relativists agree upon: the sanctity of “classical rigor.”

Like polyrhythms or fluttertonguing, the decision to compose structurally is a stylistic technique. It’s not an a priori foundation for quality. I’ve seen otherwise enlightened composers give lectures in which they defend their pop culture influence by an appeal to “craft.” Who cares? Does it sound good? Then you did it right. Does it sound bad? Then all the craft in the world won’t save you.

The only thing that’s ever mattered about any piece of music, ever, is what it sounds like. Martin Bresnick used to talk about how a good piece of music should make you check for your wallet; you should feel like you got your ass kicked after listening to it.

How it got made only matters if what got made matters. No one gives a shit about your craft if your music sucks. Likewise, there’s plenty of music that makes you check for your wallet, even if it doesn’t hold up to analysis.

So what makes music good? What makes music relevant?

The answer is, “who cares?” Figure out what you like to hear. Then go listen to it and make more.

Here’s a brief rundown on what’s happening. I promise to get to all of it in more detail soon:

1) I’ll be playing some kind of hybrid live/DJ set at Brooklyn’s venerable Halcyon Records on Wednesday, April 14 from 7-9pm EST. If you don’t happen to be in Brooklyn, fear not; the whole thing will be broadcast live at dailysession.com and then archived and streamed via both dailysession and the Halcyon website. Expect music and witty banter.

Ghostly International

2) I previously discussed my performance of Terry Riley’s In C at Le Poisson Rouge in November of 2009 with the venerable and not-to-be-stopped GVSU New Music Ensemble. I’m thrilled to announce that the live recording of this performance will be released by the also-venerable and not-to-be-stopped Ghostly International on April 27. I can’t tell you how thrilled and honored I am about this, both because GVSUNME deserves all the attention they can get and because Ghostly is pretty much my favorite label, ever.

3) I’ll be performing at the Whitney Museum of American Art on May 7 at 6:30, as part of a series of performances on and around a sculpture installation. For about an hour, I’ll be recording the sounds of the sculpture and the room itself and turning them into something like music in real time.

4) I’m writing an opera for the Staatsoper Stuttgart for performance this July. Yes, that’s very soon. This is why I’m busy.

What's that? Not what you wanted? Steve's not listening to you. (Photo by mattbuchanan - (CC))

(Note: my gig at Ableton might tempt you to read between the lines of this post to glean information about upcoming plans. Avoid this temptation. Not only do I not have any info here, I would never suggest or imply anything about future Ableton developments on this website. This disclaimer should be implicit, but this is my personal space.)

By now, every geek this side of Cupertino has weighed in on the iPad. So my attempt to add to the noise could easily be seen as just a crude attempt to cash in on a trending topic for the purpose of leveraging website traffic. Fair enough.

But as a geek with a particular niche interest — computer music technology — I hope to bring some fresh perspective.

There seem to be two dominant reactions to the iPad:

1. It’s a big iPod Touch. What a joke!
2. It’s a big iPod Touch. How awesome!

The WankosphereBlogosphere debates the second half of the realization, but everyone’s basically in agreement about the first half: it’s not a keyboard-less laptop. It’s something much less. Or is it more?

The arguments about “openness” and “extensibility” apply about as much to this device as they apply to the iPhone/iPod Touch, which is to say, they don’t. The market for these devices isn’t hackers. It’s consumers. This is for anyone who wants to sit on the couch and have a simple but functional media experience. It’s for people who don’t want endless possibilities, but rather an elegant and safe set of possibilities.

Now, I’m not afraid to get a little dirty trying to make gadgets do unusual things. But even I have my limits. Every couple years, I try a desktop Linux installation just to get a sense of how far things have come. This usually lasts about an hour. Something is ALWAYS broken, and getting it to work requires near-infinite Googling followed by the editing of scary configuration files. Some people live for this kind of fiddling. I find it boring. I have basically no interest in tools themselves — only as a means to get things done.

And this is why things like the iPad are really exciting for me. Because it’s locked down tighter than an El Al cockpit, you can be pretty sure that there won’t be any fiddling with configuration files. It’s just going to work, period. There are already iPhone apps (like TouchOSC) that do multitouch control of musical applications over Wi-Fi. I can’t imagine it will take long for these applications to appear on the iPad as well. Until now, the only viable multitouch controller for computer music applications was a boutique item called the Lemur. It’s gorgeous, powerful and completely unaffordable for most mortals. Now the iPad is here and, at about a quarter of the Lemur’s cost, stands to bring usable multitouch to a price point that many musicians can reach.

Yes, Apple fosters a closed, monopolistic ecosystem. But they also make tools that work. This is important for people who want to get stuff done, and perhaps less important for people who want to sit around and polish their tools.

If you’re still not convinced, consider this: would there be an ever-expanding field of iPhone competitors if the iPhone wasn’t such a game-changer? Perhaps even more important than the iPad itself is the fact that laptop-sized multitouch is about to become a real market segment. For some, this might be exciting because it means more tools and more fiddling. For me, it’s exciting because it promises more ways to get stuff done.

After many years, dennisdesantis.com 2.0 has arrived. (An aside: technically, this is more like 5.0. I’ve been maintaining a personal website for about 15 years. I started even before Geocities existed – yes, there was such a time. Early versions had things like lens flare effects. If you’ve been keeping track this long, you’re either a slightly creepy stalker or you’re my mother.)

As you can see, the new site features a cleaner, minimal design, and no longer has the confusing division between “Latest News” and “Journal.” Now the whole thing functions as a blog, which means maybe I’ll actually update now and then.

Other features include:

• an updated score store, with automatic downloading after a purchase. I no longer have to email files manually, meaning you could buy stuff from me even if I died. Hurray for technology.
• locally-hosted audio files. No more broken links. No more relying on flakey record companies to maintain accurate archives of their backstock.
• an events calendar, that automatically removes things once they’re finished. (Hint: I can only add events if I know about them. So if you’re playing a piece of mine, let me know.)
• an RSS feed, if you’d prefer to read my latest musings alongside stuff from proper news outlets in some fancy-pants feed aggregator.
• all the goodies that a modern blogging platform can provide, such as tags, commenting, etc. There’s really little reason for you to visit any other websites anymore.

Thanks for reading.