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Free Music!

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KvP:
I think Johnny is actually getting to something here (nothing to knock in his defense of labels, at least) so I'll ask him to clarify.

So Johnny, are we to believe that the only way for an artist to attain legitimacy is by an earnest pursuit of profit? When you say

--- Quote ---i don't think i have the time as a listener to listen to something that the artist involved doesn't even feel bothered to place a value on. there's so much out there that i'll never even get to - i might as well show the artists i like that i at least respect the token price of appreciation they've charged me.
--- End quote ---
it's that "doesn't even feel bothered to place a value on" which bothers me. Are we to believe that a song or album can only really be pointless shit unless a price tag is tacked on it? Are we really going to take seriously the idea of monetary value as the only value (or at least, the most vitally important one)? I think there's a lot to be said against free dissemination of music, mainly that it invites laziness and bloat when it comes to presenting a finished good, but that doesn't really have anything intrinsically to do with the pricing or lack thereof of the music, it's just a matter of discipline which can be overcome.

Music was once a commodity but it is no longer one, and people have started to take it for granted in the same way they take lots of other easily accessible things for granted (like water, for instance) . Even “successful” bands have a rough time of it, and labels are withering. World tours will likely become a thing of the past. All of that is true, and you can be morose about it to be sure, but if you think there’s any way to salvage the traditional context of music there’s a bridge in Alaska I would love to sell you (and the RIAA will be frantically calling on you). That’s just kind of the way it has to be from now on. You can shame bands for clumsily trying to adapt, but what are you really offering them? I agree that it sucks, and the "new age" of internet-spread music (AnCo and their imitators, Chillwave, Witch House) that is supposed to represent the future of the industry hasn't inspired much confidence in me, but what are you going to do except get over it or turn into a musical version of the RPG Codex, in your own little echo chamber of acidic misanthropy?

Pogotross:

--- Quote from: Johnny C on 20 Sep 2010, 00:58 ---and who's a middleman ...

--- End quote ---

I'm not saying labels (or any other middlemen) are bad. In fact, as you've said, they serve a very important purpose to the listening audience. (They also serve an important function to the bands, but if I had to guess, it will be one of those "everything falls apart and then gets rebuilt" kind of deals.)

It's more like...the labels (or more specifically, I was talking about the talent scouts) were gatekeepers, and bands were standing in line, but then the internet came, everyone saw the door was open and they all charged the gate. So they've all got access to this possible world-wide fan-base that existed behind there. Which is absolutely fantastic for bands that wouldn't have quite made the cut. They get to make their appeal straight to the listeners. There will still be other middle men (Review websites, venues, friends, stores, the whole lot of it) but there doesn't HAVE to be. That's the key of what I'm saying. There doesn't HAVE to be a friend. There doesn't HAVE to be an advertisement or radio play. (There will still be something between the band and the listener because, let's face it, you probably aren't going to run into the artist on the street and they hand you the free cd, but the barriers are so low now you can easily look over the other side.)


From what I'm getting, though, is that you want bands and listeners to value the music more, right?  Maybe kind of in the same way that people fear loose women ruining social/marital climates and "reducing their value to men." That it ruins the sacred/current band/listener arrangement. But as you say, as a listener, you only have so much time! Every minute you spend listening to a band you might not like (which is a risk you take, even if non financial) is still an opportunity cost to you. And the problem with having so many bands putting out free music is that it makes the time you've put aside for music listening that much more scarce on a "per available band basis." So they HAVE put a price on it...your time. If you feel that's less than they deserve, tell them. Bandcamp has the "donate some money" button. Every band has some kind of email address where you can say "hey guys, heard your album, I loved it! My favorite song was X, I loved it when you did Y, is there anywhere I can pick up a physical copy?"

And if you don't think a band who doesn't charge for their album isn't worth your time, that's completely fine. There's a reason why "high-end" department stores can charge such higher prices, and it isn't all from the higher quality of goods.

KharBevNor:
In this thread, Johnny is bitter because he is not a rock star, blames the modern world for tricking him out of a life doing coke off underage roadies, rejects techological and cultural progress, declares that only one sort of music has value. Next up, John Philip Sousa on how the phonograph will put all musicians out of business, followed by Pope Gregory I on the evils of polyphony. 


I get far, far more enjoyment out of post-industrial and dark ambient music distributed free over the internet than I ever will out of the vast bulk of the tedious 'authentic rock musicans' signed to some creaking indie like Touch&Go. So art doesn't have a curator anymore. It's not like it ever needed one anyway.

Back to the original , I gave Slime in the Current huge brownie points because I first heard them as a placed track whilst listening to Panopticon's last.fm radio station. That means that this band paid some money and then thought 'what radio stations should we put ourselves on to maximise our potential listenership?' and they picked fucking Panopticon. Brilliant. That is exactly the kind of shit I would do. 

öde:
DEY TUK AR JEEERBS

Johnny C:
it's really not about the idea of music as commodity, it's about the ultimately ephemeral nature of the way we consume music now. i'm concerned with artists getting paid but only from me liking the music they make and me not wanting them to be one of those bands that just tools around locally after a couple great records and quit. it's obviously not a blanket thing but since i don't listen to khar's tedious aimless darkwave or w/e i want the bands that i listen to to keep being around, and so i'd kind of appreciate it being remotely viable. that's only part of what i'm getting at though.

i don't think a band like ladyhawk or joan of arc or portico or any of these bands that i've pored over their albums time and time again are bands you can really get on first listen - whether that's a good thing or a bad thing - and i think that the thing that free music does, more than make anything bloated or make anyone poor, is make music disposable, because if on its first listen it doesn't immediately catch you, you can just get more. it becomes more about space on your hard drive than it does your actual i guess commitment to the music, in a lot of ways.

the reason i'm arguing that there should be a middleman is because ultimately art is reflexive. it's a mode of discourse through which we relate to other people, through which we relate to parts of ourselves that we hadn't previously considered, through which we relate to the idea of art itself. tamper with that and what does the point of art become? what's the point of art if it separates us from others? if it doesn't have any effect on us whatsoever? it doesn't make us think about the actual work? then, like i said, it's just data - it's just a thing that we don't really pay a second thought to.

i guess my problem isn't that i want bands to adapt - in fact i guess my problem is i don't want bands or artists to adapt, and i'm sick of that dominating the discourse. i want people who consider themselves listeners to start thinking about it, and not in the fundamentally selfish way that "how are bands going to adapt to ME" is. i want listeners to stop being so goddamn lazy all the time, and to figure out ways to actually enter into sophisticated discourse about it rather than the unrealistic and again selfish presumption that the only thing important is their own little bubble and the whole "well that's just like your opinion man" thing.

the thing about money is that ultimately it works really convenient as a shorthand for value. capitalism has some serious problems but to ask the people who provide us with a thing that we ostensibly value to exchange the hour we spent listening to the fruit of their labour for gas money or whatever is really presumptuous of us. the reason money is a part of what i'm getting at - but only a part - is that it's realistically all we have to show these bands that we value them, and really it's the only way to guarantee that we'll actually value the music we get. it shows that we value that risk we take. it shows that we value the idea of having to actually work for art.

maybe there's another way to show it but we shouldn't act like we have that other way before we do. if we don't, i hope we all like the idea of art being the province of the rich, because they're the only people who don't need us to show that we value what they do.

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