Wow, what an awesome post! Bands make their money touring, CD sales bring jackshit. I'm a musician that used to make my living solely from gigging. Anyone is welcome to pass my music on, I consider it the ultimate PR. I'm going to link to this after I get off my ass.
I write prolifically but work at a deli at Safeway. I don't really mind it, because to be frank I'm not sure that what we have right now is so bad. I'm very torn, because I know that blogs and websites and the whole internet phenomenon make it harder for everyone from musicians to writers to make any sort of living off of their work. On the other hand, when has there been such a democratic outlet? Anyone can let out their creativity, and I've discovered true genius that never would have been picked up and marketed.
Hey Brian, you probably read it, but Jonathan Lethem took up some of these issues sort of brilliantly in Harper's a few months back in an essay called "The Ecstasy of Influence," and the essay itself relied in part on a fantastic book you might not know called "The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property" by Lewis Hyde...both really excellent, provocative works about the role of art/artists in a capitalist society.
Dean, the reason "CD sales bring jackshit" is because most of the money doesn't go to the artist - they sure as hell bring a lot more than jackshit to the big record companies. See Tom Robinson's website for a breakdown of who makes money on downloads as well. It shouldn't be that way - not every musician wants to tour; some are more comfortable working in the studio than facing a live audience and/or being away from their families for extended periods.
Brian, I like your utopian vision of a society where everyone exchanges art freely, but in the real world artists have to eat. The more they have to work at other jobs to achieve this, the less time they have left to create. What you envision is not so much the transformation of music as the transformation of society.
As a writer myself, I write a blog for free, but I have also been paid for some of my other writing. Frankly I want to be paid to write, not because I'm a greedy capitalist pig, but because I want to write more and still be able to eat and pay my mortgage. Right now it's one or the other.
Private Beach - here's a link to the Harper's story that Ethan mentioned, from writer Jonathan Lethem: The Ecstasy of Influence. It pretty much explains in detail how I feel about copyright, I agree with the author's sentiment, here's a quote:
Artists and their surrogates who fall into the trap of seeking recompense for every possible second use end up attacking their own best audience members for the crime of exalting and enshrining their work. The Recording Industry Association of America prosecuting their own record-buying public makes as little sense as the novelists who bristle at autographing used copies of their books for collectors.
Ever since the Internet supplanted record companies as the biggest distributors of music, I thought about what Brian mentions:
We need to be thinking about what comes next, and how it might be better for us as a culture than what we have now.
The genie is out of the bottle - how do we harness the collective for the better of art?
I forgot to mention this in my first reply, about context in music blog posts. If I just post a bunch of songs without any background info, they get one third the downloads of the tracks I explain my love for.
You download it for free, we get charged back for it/
I know you're saying, they won't know they won't miss it/
Besides, I ain't a thief, they won't pay me a visit/
So if I come to your job, take your corn on the cob/
And take a couple kernels off it that would be alright with you?
I recognize that lonely prophetic voice, B. I just had lunch with a friend who, like me, like you, is also trying to make art in a world that doesn't encourage the doing of things for their own sake.
Maybe the sheer numbers of thwarted liberal arts/creative types will eventually force us to replace the idea of the artist as specialist in favor of the artist as amateur, in its original sense: someone who feels passion or curiosity and de to pursue the impulse. That's sort of what my writing at MW is all about. And frankly, I can't think of any better skill set for being human than the ability to engage with the world on your own terms and communicate the results to others.
Keep hope alive, B!
Posters, it filled my heart with gratitude to open the comments box and find these thoughtful, smart posts. I expected flames. I don't often talk this way outside of discourse communities that self-define as "anarchists" - it's good to find company in the wilderness.
I did read and greatly admire the Lethem article in Harper's, for its thought and formal ingenuity both. I'll check out the Hyde book, thanks Ethan.
Private Beach is right that I'm envisioning the transformation of music as a sub-expression of the transformation of culture. The "real world" is a manufactured commodity, only real in this instant. Other worlds are possible.
That Andre3000 lyric is from my Devin the Dude post last week-- someone commented on that post that I was "enabling the thieves." It's interesting that some people are zeroing in on this lyrical excerpt and ignoring what comes right after it-- "But we just keep recording and it ain't to get no condo..." That verse is something of a Rorscach test...
"If you want to charge me for it, I'll probably say "No thanks-- I can make my own." Why would I buy something that I can make myself, and that has no concrete material value?"
Mmmm, quite frankly? Here's why- because even though I really, really enjoy Moistworks overall, and your writing specifically, I find it more than a little difficult to believe that you've got a treasure trove of incredible pop songs recorded to four-track in your bedroom. In other words, I respectfully doubt that you can, in fact, "make it yourself." This very disconnect- your ability to appreciate, and your (and my, for sure) inability to produce great songs- is what imbues these songs, and therefore the artists who create them, with "value." And this value is what we all should be acknowledging in the only widely significant and accepted manner I'm aware of- financially. To suggest otherwise lacks the intellectual rigor I've come to associate with Moistworks...
Regards,
jb
Amen, brother.
It may be a breach of license, it may be illegal, it may even be wrong, but it ain't 'stealing'.
Nowadays just to get between a Jew and dollar is classed as stealing.
(And for the record, most of us conservatives don't love capitalism -- we just hate Socialism and Fascism more...)
I agree with Kip.
I feel you jb-- but still, I disagree. I'm not capable of singing like Antony from Antony and the Johnsons, and I can't play guitar like Ted Leo. But I can make sound; the sound of a couple piano keys is more than enough to satisfy me musically. The value of that well-made pop song is only valuable in the current paradigm - pop is just a musical configuration, it hasn't always been around, and while its pervasiveness might make it seem otherwise, it's not necessarily ideal. Other modes of production and appreciation have enjoyed favor and will again, and the virtuoso will still be a virtuoso. Still, within our current paradigm, I understand the idea that exceptional creators should reap financial rewards. My question is, when we sell an abstract quantity like music, what are we selling? And I believe the answer is an air of validity - we take things more seriously when we pay for them. A great song and a crappy song both cost 99 cents on iTunes. I don't claim I can make great pop music - I claim I don't require it. If the paradigm shifts so that people stop making great pop music - and if this conincides with a shift away from capitalist venality, and the idea that money is the ultimate expression of one's appreciation, I'll embrace it - my piano is waiting patiently.
On JB's and Brian's exchange, isn't part of the glory of pop that you mostly can do it yourself? Obviously there are geniuses who do it at a different level. But isn't part of loving the music posted here appreciating simplicity, immediacy and occasional flashes of genius?
To take one recent phenomenal pop song, "Hey Ya"-- it is really just about 3 or 4 great hooks. Yes, the lyrics are interesting in contrast to the song and the break is both funny and funky and there are a million little things that make it extraordinary. But couldn't I do something just as good on the right day if inspiration struck? Just maybe. Great pop music is simultaneously within our grasp of us and out of our reach.
Brian-- I would love to get the link to your website.
thanks Dave-- it's actually already linked on Moistworks, called "Glossolalia" in the links section.
should we not pay or charge for performances, either? after all, they're just as fleeting and again, what are you paying for? the performers' practice time? the chance to jump up and down in a smoky room? ["is this the way the future's meant to feel? or just 40,000 people standing in a field?"] i'm not so sure bands make their money from touring anyway, as a friend of mine who's in an on-the-up-and-up band has attested to.
as a 'highly-trained' musician, i've been struggling with a lot of the issues you discuss here, brian. the music education major in me agrees: music, art, writing, dance are fantabulous ways to pass the time and are absolutely accessible to everyone, regardless of whether they're amazing or sucky. i hate 'music appreciation' courses that are geared towards memorizing dates and shit; it's like having to learn the whole history of baseball first, instead of starting with a game of catch. but is teaching the only valid way to make money as an artist? or is that a load of bunk, too, 'cause you can just do whatever you like? are you, brian, in effect saying that 'artist' as an occupation is morally wrong? (i'm not trying to be indignant here, i'm just trying to dig a little deeper...)
andrea, as long as we're opearating under questions of saleability, you could arguably draw a dinstiction between selling performance and selling recorded music-- the former might be perceived as enlisting someone to perform a service for you, while the latter might be perceived as something more like cold-calling -- the artist shows up with something they weren't asked for and says, "Will you buy this?" But this is just hair-splitting. I'm not saying anything is "morally wrong," just thinking about a situation that seems to be becoming untenable.
I appreciate your utopian concept for the free exchange of art. However, your stereo metaphor fails me. In "sharing" music in that manner what wo do not steal is CDs. What we do steal is the ability of the artist to make income from them. And that even though it's intangible to us, is certainly tangible to them. But, at the same time I do se the promotional value of MP3 blogs. Awareness does not equate directly to sales, but I think even the most conservative pundits woudl agree it's a prerequisite.
Radiohead give it away and reach Number one...fantastic...so there no relation between downloads and sales as most have always known....at least those at bottom of the ladder ...those at the top know game up there too but pretending it not...and 'diverting' funds into ringfencing live performances as 'income streams' that why Uk now cracking down on touts....
If cant get it one way sure as hell will get it another..and ticket prices will rise and rise...
Personally I offering myself in your living room for a 'peronal appearance' for only $100...$200 if you want me to speak 
Oh and States need a ticket over too...bargain...
http://leisureblogs.chicagotribu...head-
debut.html
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