Posted by admin on May 13th, 2008
Some like Steve Albini and Ric Ocasek say it has always been free, but that is a matter of philosophy. When i say recorded music is becoming free it’s without respect to how I think it should be or whether it is good or bad — simply that that is the process which began with cassette home taping, blew up with Napster, evolved with Oink, and continues today.
I would point to Roger McGuinn who testified at the Napster hearings that “My CD is my calling card.” Here’s a guy who should be filthy rich as the founding member of one the most successful rock bands of the 60’s. and yet at sixty something he’s happy to pack up his guitar and hit the road, performing for old Byrds fans, and his CD is his calling card, not a product, because it generates more money for him as a calling card.
Also way ahead of their time were the Grateful Dead. Although the music isn’t my cuppa, I think they were geniuses for encouraging people to tape their shows — and not on shitty equipment either, dudes were out there with expensive mics and digital recorders bootlegging the fuck out of them, and the whole thing created a culture which allowed the band to thrive for decades after they stopped recording new material.
There are newer models. Breaks producer Dan F built both his career and his record label Disuye from the ground up by giving away high bit rate mp3s of his tracks. And of course many of the top bands today like The Presets and Hotchip, and electronica producers like Justice and Boys Noize owe their success in large part to the network of music bloggers who give away free copies of their tracks, generating promotion they could never purchase.
Let’s take a quick look at the economics of selling tracks through download services like itunes and beatport. How much time, effort, and money goes into setting up, maintaining, tracking, and servicing the download services? The services take a piece of every sale. The remaining piece is divided between the artist (divided by each collaborator) and the label. If the label involves multiple people, there’s additional mouths feeding off that 1-2 dollar download. I’m pretty sure you’d make more working at Store 24.
The real value of the recording is as a promotional tool, so why pretend otherwise? It’s just shaking your fists at the sky.