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Free music devalueating music itself?
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People who enjoyed reading this: hecanjog, room, jogn, delete, bodo, gamatam, minisystem, bbwax, mlbot, daswesen, subset, opticecho, zach, quicks, Ochre, infradead, ignatius, utofbu, implexgrace, nicknotis, korgborglar, cbit
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the guys from audio damage posted another provocing blog.
this time it's about the question, if the music, that is given away for free like trent reznor did, is not totally destroying the understanding that music itself is a cultural value. and moves like that make the avarage music consumer think, that music is just some sort of artistic extension for merchandise, tours and such. making it hard to earn at least a little bit of income through records for the normal indie or subindie artists.
i'm still not quite sure about the answer, especially when i look back at the history of netlabels and such and the vital scene that has evolved around that, but i can see the point they are making.
nevertheless interesting topic.
discuss!
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05/09/08
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hecanjog
I'm extremely interested in this - I'm on my way to bed, but tomorry plan to join in the discussion! For my part I'm interested in how value changes in type and scope under a netlabel/free model. I'm all for transforming valuation as commodity into valuation as community - I don't know if the netlabel model is the best way to move in that direction, but I think it's promising.
I'll actually read the article and then run my mouth off more tomorrow however. ;-)
Good blog topic!
05/09/08
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room
yes i think it does devalue
i think musicians cannot expect to be paid (if no wants to pay)
but if they dedicate much time and effort coupled with a talent which means they create a valuable thing then that should be valued - both in terms of community awareness and appreciation and money
the money - allows the artist to concentrate more time on making the music and adding to the aesthetic value of the community and less time earning a living through other (often non-artistic means)
at the end of the day....
If the pie-maker makes a nice pie and people want to eat it then they should pay him for his ingrediants, his electricity bill and his time and talent
Why should it be any different for music?
EMI & Universal etc - represent extremes of the capatalist success story for music
but have people really considered what the musical landscape would be like without their work and organisation?
05/09/08
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room
Many many many artists we value would have walked away from music if they had no way of earning money from CD/record sales
05/09/08
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jogn
They wouldn't have walked away, but the output would have been drastically reduced.
05/09/08
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delete
it depends on who's offering their music for free. i don't think most artists releasing stuff on netlabels pose any threat to 'signed' artists' income. i also think that if someone worries that their music won't sell because there's music given away for free elsewhere, then they subconciously feel their music is not different, unique or 'good enough', which may or may not be the case.
05/09/08
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gamatam
Historically, music is entertainment - you get paid to play or you play and hold your hat out hoping for the best. Music as a commodity is new, flawed and doesn't benefit most musicians.
I suppose record labels should be seen as benefactors, as they promote a subset of 'artists' for their own grandeur and generally screw the artists too 
can't..get..everything..else..out..head
05/09/08
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deltasleep
i'm just in it for the love.
music is, by and large, a pretty frivolous, ephemeral commodity. the sooner you get comfortable with that idea, and get over this idea that your music is eternal, the sooner you get a perspective on what you're doing. it's entertainment. dig through a bin of thrift store records. even in the case of things that customers actually bought, only maybe 1% lasted long enough for anybody younger than 40 to have heard of!
edited: May 09 2008
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phundamental
Well giving your music away for free is perfectly valid IMO, it's not like anyone can force you to sell it. In the end it's as simple as this - if you have something people will want for a cost then great, if you don't (no matter what's the reason - like in this case that other people are giving their music away for free) then it's only your own fault. And I wouldnt take that NIN album for free anyway.
05/09/08
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phundamental
Also you get the feel from that blog entry that this guy thinks users are idiots, yet he expects to get money from them, which is kinda what the RIAA is doing so...
05/09/08
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minisystem
mr. audio damage's account of trent reznor getting flown off to england to have pretty hate machine produced at great expense seems a little outdated to me in the days of cheap computers and cheap/free software that, imo, can do a pretty darn good job of spitting out some quality sounding recordings with the right skills. pretty hate machine doesn't sound to me like it was made in multiple fancy studios by professional engineers/producers.
i must admit to not losing any sleep at night over artists not getting paid for their music, mostly for the reasons that deltasleep mentions. there's so many ways to hear new music now and so much music out there. in my mind, there is an oversupply of good music. theres' so much good music out there that i don't even know where to start and that pool of good music is forever getting bigger and bigger. with so much good music out there, does it mean that the per song value of music should decrease over time?
05/09/08
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elronhubbard
room said: "Many many many artists we value would have walked away from music if they had no way of earning money from CD/record sales"
likewise, many many many flavors of the week would have never been shoved down our gullets if they had no way of earning money from CD/record sales.
05/09/08
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mlbot
Everybody can make poop, too... but only gardeners buy it.
Also, I love deltasleep.
05/09/08
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room
"shoved down our gullets"
come on the listener - the audience is intelligent not passive
if you are into your music you make real choices about what you listen to or not
and you do that by downloading music or buying CDs
.... sure there is a mainstream .... and clever marketing to the children & teenagers .... music is packaged into a glossy sugar coated image package .....
but when you get past that need to belong to an image gang - you look for attaching at a deeper level to the sound (well some of us do) for other people music is just something in the background .....
The label as a gatekeeper to quality is an important role in my view
And the wish to sustain the artform and the artist and the label creates a pressure on how that quality is built
business models can be cynically driven but they are also usually responsive to underlying trends/underground sounds - there is a symbiosis I think
The challenge in these times is to build a community of appreciation which includes financial support for the artist
So they are bought time to carry on creating.... or maybe (in case of smaller labels) just bought space on a physical product - you can sell 150 CDs and break even on a run of 500.... I like to think that the customers who bought the CD bought a share of appreciation of that work - an acknowledgement of the work that the artist - they are the owners not just of the individual CD but like shareholders in the whole release
Thats what He can Jog's next release is like - it will survive or sink depending on whether this em411 community responds to support his work....
05/09/08
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zach
There seems to be a deeply ingrained psychology - in the residents of capitalist societies - that cost suggests value. This makes sense. When we ask what the pay for a given job will be, time itself is broken into dollar increments. ("I will pay you $10 for each hour you perform this task." / "I will pay you $20,000 each year you perform this task.") Every graphic design book I've read suggests that young designers charge something (anything) for any work they produce other than classwork; suggesting that one free piece of work will beget dozens of requests for free work and that those requests will also trickle out to other designers, pre-emptively devaluing their work. Again, the advice draws on that seemingly intrinsic (to "Western" society) corellation between monetary expectation and perceived worth.
I just started reading Anti-Oedipus by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. One of the first things established in the book is their belief that the stages of goods - normally broken down as production, distribution, and consumption - would be better described as just different kinds of production. To them, everything is production and every being a machine interfacing with other machines. (I produce a song, the song produces an MP3 file or CDR, the MP3 or CDR produces a listening experience, etc.) This view started me thinking along the path of music production and how I wanted any music I make to be consumed or... keeping with Deleuze and Guattari... what I want my products to produce.
When I gave away previous CDRs for free, only a handful of friends requested them. Then I sold the most recent CDR, getting a lot of attention and the word-of-mouth spread to friends of friends of friends.
So this seems like a conflict between behavioral psychology and idealism. It may be true that more people will pay for something if it comes with a pricetag already attached. But I don't know if that's what we should choose, just because it is the most successful model at the moment. It's complicated. :/
Also: Honor system bookstore. Honor system wine-bars. Honor system bakery.
05/09/08
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zach
room said: "The challenge in these times is to build a community of appreciation which includes financial support for the artist"
Exactly.
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