I listened to the most recent Shpongle album. It sounded like someone needed money. It certainly didn’t beat “Nothing Lasts But Nothing Is Lost” (which I bought, months after having it on repeat), it felt like a recap on what Shpongle had done so far, some of the ol’ Shpongle spirit, so to speak, and thus I believe that the leak of this album has been unfortunate - because I (like countless others) had the option to check out the complete material before buying it, and I decided that I didn’t like it enough.
Now, maybe it was lack of marketing. I don’t know how well Infected Mushroom are doing with their recently released Black Kebop. I suppose they did a lot better, I remember how they spammed the hell out of us.
I read that Twisted is close to bankruptcy, and that’s unfortunate. But if you are seriously trying to run a label, you shouldn’t constantly put your hopes into the next release. Sounds more like the economic strategy of a drug addict to me.
I know Twisted might go down, but Posford will be fine. After all, these labels are labels - the people behind it will manage, and continue to do great, perhaps even outstanding work, now that they have one more worry off their back.
I’m not trying to sound like an asshole here. I’m just measuring other people by the standards I apply to my own. The more I read about the music business, the less I want anything to do with it, no matter if major or underground label.
Since I’m not attempting to make money with what I initially considered to be a hobby - and now regard as a mission - I can afford a perhaps kind of outlandish opinion, which goes kind of like this:
*ahem*
It is wrong to sell music.
Any form of “recorded” entertainment - music, books, pictures, software or movies - has been engineered to be a meme: an idea that people want to consume and to share - in fact, sharing is the whole point of it. It is like an infection that people want to get and spread. A mental virus.
In the past, an entire industry has built upon the assumption that, since distribution goes through physical media, that infection can be contained, and the virus can be kept back. To spread the meme, you always had to refer to the gatekeeper - or be a friend, and lend or sell your copy to others - something the industry has attempted to stop you from doing numerous times.
That basic assumption has been challenged by new technologies over and over again, but only a medium the technological equivalent of the atomic bomb could finally put an end to it: the internet.
These days, music ceases to be distributed through physical media. You can directly download it off the net. The distribution costs of a single copy are negligible. I can therefore hand out as many copies as I like. There is no “print run”, no scarce supply. Everybody can do as I do - make copies without costs.
Because the supply used to be scarce, the price could be used to control the speed of distribution. Today, the supply is infinite, so a price simulates the scarcity. But how to simulate a scarcity when there is a cornucopia of information? The net would route around me, it would always find a way to share and distribute, just how my work tells it to.
No longer can any meme be contained or controlled.
And isn’t it paradoxical, to make a product that almost screams “GIVE ME TO ALL OF YOUR FRIENDS, LET THE WORLD KNOW I EXIST”, but then make laws to prevent you from doing exactly that? Isn’t it ghoulish? Isn’t it outright immoral?
I have tried to sell music, and my fans have always talked me out of it. At first I thought they were freeloaders and bandits, getting in the way of what is rightfully mine, but then I understood: you can make an impact selling quality music, but these days, where so many people cut themselves a dent, the greatest difference you can make is being a bit like old Jesus Christ himself.
And it’s not even hard for me. Demand isn’t even high enough to sustain myself. It would be buckets of sweat and some investment on my own until anything decent were trickling down to me, and that in turn would interfere with, well, making music. I’d have to let someone else release my music for me, and certainly I would not only lose creative control, but also control of distribution. Not to mention the alienation of core fans, on whose shoulders I stand.
Seriously, don’t we want to promote a lifestyle of creativity? Isn’t it great when everyone can distribute art and entertainment, instead of a selected few? We have entered, no, we are already in the middle of a second renaissance, where we all re-learn how to entertain our friends (and make new friends through entertainment), how to be the stars on our own little stages - and I totally love it.
Do you remember this anti-piracy ad for movies from a while back, where it showed you a movie where the props became really cheap one by one, and then it said something like “PIRACY MAKES YOUR MOVIES LOOK BAD”, implying that movie piracy would force studios to cut budgets, and thus future movies would look like shit.
Now, these days, there are five dollar productions on YouTube, and some of these are already more entertaining than some billion dollar productions from Hollywood that I’ve seen, proving that a big budget doesn’t make a good movie.
I’m also pretty sure there is proof out there that if money is involved, entertainment productions might even become worse. I wouldn’t be surprised.
