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Free music devalueating music itself?
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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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Leo
I'm interested in the donation-based model. It seems to me that those honestly affected by the music would pitch in a decent price, whereas those who didn't, but wanted it as a commodity would pay fifty cents. My girlfriend is a visual artist. She recently spent a great deal of time on a project, and decided to price it as if she was making slightly below minimum wage per hour. It was $1000. If her work was to be donation-based, she may not be able to cover her materials once it is bought. However, if she sets the price at below minimum wage per hour, it may not sell at all. The most I've spent on a piece of art was $150. I do not know how long it took the person, or what it cost them to make it. I bought it because I felt that I would receive $150 of enjoyment out of it. Monetary measurements of enjoyment are very flexible, however. Some people pay very good money for short time spans of good feeling, while others would not pay a penny on that, but thousands on a glass collection. Donation-ware.
05/09/08
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infradead
for me its does the value the artist place on it reflect what its worth. if the value reflects what the worth of the music is than shitty popular music must reign supreme over all netlabels and other such.. 20 dollars for a cd straight price verus a download.
however if the cd is utter and complete shit as far as i'm concerned then where is the value for my money?
compare this with a label like 8bitpeoples which is one of the best known chiptune labels out there.. they put out a majority of everything for free with a creative commons license on it.. so you're free to download, listen, share, and sample as long as you respect the thier wishes and follow the terms that they put on it..
so which is the better value? the free good music or the shitty music i'd have to pay for?
05/09/08
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deltasleep
$150 of enjoyment?
I think we've just got a really distorted perspective on music because we've all been born into a weird 50-25 year period in which, for the first time in human history, a musician could be paid huge sums of money for music they didn't perform. That may very well end. It never even happened for a lot of the world.
Don't get me wrong, though. Making a living doing what I love would be amazing. But I don't want to try and make my living by "creating an innovative solution for generating revenue from those who appreciate my music." And I'm not really a performer, either. What I'm trying to do is learn how to be happy and appreciate the 5-6 listeners I have. I won't lie, I'd enjoy a little notoriety, or infamy, or recognition. Ok, I'd love it.
05/09/08
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adcBicycle
i'm all for musicians getting paid.
but, imagine if it was relatively easy to make money off music... think about how much more crap there would be out there... at least now people do it for the most part because they like and/or are good at it... not for money.
05/09/08
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deltasleep
yeah, if there's some concern that we're going to force musicians out of music because they aren't making any money... what makes you think that 99.9% of musicians are even making any money in the first place?
05/09/08
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subset
room said: "The challenge in these times is to build a community of appreciation which includes financial support for the artist"
'financial support forthe artist' could mean a lot of things. I think I agree with you, but does this mean that music could be subsumed under govt't support for the arts type programs? Like where there is a 'jury of peers' allocating funds? This model is partly appealing to me, but obviously has its pitfalls (who are the peers, what are the decision criteria, does the govt then get their hand in yay-ing or nay-ing, etc). It would be great if people who appreciate the music would also pay for it, but if they are also musicians, dont' they still have to go get the money somewhere else? Or do you think there is an even enough split between buyers and sellers?
deltasleep said: " for the first time in human history, a musician could be paid huge sums of money for music they didn't perform."
I dont' understand what this means - are we talking about Milli Vanilli now? Really, I'm not trying to argue, i just want to understand what you're saying.
05/09/08
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hecanjog
zach said: "There seems to be a deeply ingrained psychology - in the residents of capitalist societies - that cost suggests value.
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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.
....
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. :/"
I very much agree. The interesting and valuable thing about the netlabel phenomenon is that in some ways it manages to sidestep the cost/value association. Often part of the value that's getting assigned to the netlabel 'experience' is the value of participating in a community. Modern netlabels (and in many cases, independent labels in general) aren't the one-to-many conduits they used to be. They encourage participation on the part of the listener, very often including them directly in the production process itself and the line between producer and consumer often blurs a fair amount. It's not typically as passive an activity to become invested in a netlabel as it would have been to say become invested in Blue Note Records in the 1950s. Now labels like Audiobulb and 12k and Hippocamp et al distinctly and deliberately build the community into the fabric of what they do. 12k gives away music regualrly and recently hosted an open remix project where it eventually distributed music made by the folks who were listening. Even simple things like label web forums where a dialog can be opened about the activities of the label shouldn't be brushed off just because they're so ubiquitous now. These are emergent and crude examples of where this all will go in the future - but I think it's all very telling, and terribly exciting. Check out what Clay Shirky has to say about this: link
I also want to speak to the 'music as entertainment' thing that's come up earlier in the thread. I think it's a good example of a capitalist way of looking at music at culture. It's just what we're talking about when we say 'the commodification of art' - when music is culturally and ideologically categorized the way a soda is, that's commodification. That's also a very new thing - like deltasleep said, this new model of pay-for-unit-of-pleasure isn't much older than industrialized capitalist society is - and in the scope of musical history it is a flash in the pan. It's easy to say music is entertainment, nothing more - but that's because it's the dominant ideology of the moment. Commodity culture. Look at the myriad ways music has operated and continues to operate in the past and present: as a ritual device, as a vehicle for oral history, as a way of spreading cultural knowledge, etc etc. Maybe I'm jumping to conclusions in what you all have been implying about music as entertainment, but I think to characterize music on the whole as a source of entertainment only is to ignore a vast and diverse role it has played and continues to play in society for thousands of years.
Okay, now I'm really going to read the article, sorry if this is off topic - I just read through the comments so far.
05/09/08
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gamatam
deltasleep said: "yeah, if there's some concern that we're going to force musicians out of music because they aren't making any money... what makes you think that 99.9% of musicians are even making any money in the first place?"
damn right, theres a lot of posturing going on about a small minority.
I think the future of music is going the news has gone already: people are not going to specific news sites or specific blogs any more (based on trends) or even taking note of which blahg they're reading, but by haphazard 'surfing' (is this term still valid?) are bound to come across news thats relevant anyway.
So we might not all get to hear the next pink floyd,but we'll hear their derivatives, or the cover bands or whatever. But we might get to hear the kid next door who's been practicing in his basement.
..and maybe we won't worry about it so much..
05/09/08
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bla
how about this:
give me loads of money or ill never make any music again
or
give me loads of money and ill never make any music again
05/09/08
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papergoose
i think music is going to be basically free... it IS basically free. I think were the money is going to come from is
1-merchandise
2-shows
3-donations
And I've found that I'm perfectly ok with that. If I like a band alot, after hearing mp3s from various places, I will go see them when they come to town. And probably buy a t-shirt or something.
I don't really expect any more from other regarding my own music as well.
A paypal donation button on a page with a bunch of free mp3s can be a pretty good motivator.
05/09/08
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kenrestivo
"Many many many artists we value would have walked away from music if they had no way of earning money from CD/record sales"
Indeed. And many many many more artists you never got to hear (and some you may have), walked away from music because the costs of production and distribution were too high and they had no way of getting the record industry to even allow them to make music at all.
I'm old enough to remember what the music industry was like in the 1970's and 1980's. It was totally discouraging, and I'm one of the people who did walk away from music, for decades, because of that. I know plenty more who did stay in it and got stuck playing top 40 cover music in bars and weddings and such, or trying to prostitute themselves to the "hitmakers" of the day, and failing, in deep humiliation. Today there are a lot more opportunities, and it's a lot more open. You definitely do not want to go back to the old days.
Back then you pretty much HAD to have a record label behind you, or be independently wealthy, because the costs of producing music were largely beyond the capabilities of the average person. The very notable exceptions back then being DIY punk -- which is where most of the good stuff was coming from in those days, and what I enjoyed listening to at the time. But my own music was never along those lines or appealed to those audiences, so I stayed out of the game.
I remember it starting to loosen up in the late 80's and 90's indy days and then came the rave scene and the hippie-band scene and the indy "alternative" scene and other ways of going around the record industry, sort of. Nowadays it is wide open-- the costs of producing and promoting music are asymptotically approaching zero. Today the problem isn't so much how to pay for the equipment and studio rental time and promotion, it's how to support yourself while you set aside the time to make art. This is not a new problem. What's new is that most of the other problems have dissipated, leaving only this one to be solved. I consider this progress.
I'm hoping that a new generation that isn't locked up in hate and fear of the old record industry monopoly, but who does know enough history to avoid repeating it, can find a way to pay musicians for their work without allowing another creativity-stifling monopoly to emerge.
05/09/08
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hecanjog
Today the problem isn't so much how to pay for the equipment and studio rental time and promotion, it's how to support yourself while you set aside the time to make art. This is not a new problem. What's new is that most of the other problems have dissipated, leaving only this one to be solved. I consider this progress.
Well said.
05/09/08
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ricemutt
yeah, well, I think it's important that people see the need to support the arts and artists, regardless of whatever the state of the music industry is, or the means of distribution, or whatever. Sure, artists and musicians have always traditionally beat their heads against the fucking wall for little more than pennies, but I think the definite trend is towards less support of the arts and artists. I don't really have a brilliant solution for solving this problem, but I don't think people talking about how selling music is only for blind capitalists is going to help the issue. And despite music, or whatever, having its own intrinsic value beyond cash, the fact is that cash is what people need to survive. And giving artists a reward for their work is something that may not have ever been the status quo, but is always something to work towards and hope for. I think it's kind of sad that there is so much resignation, at least among net musicans, from what i've read (mostly here, I guess, haha, and in some magazines/blogs) that music is now "free" and the only way we can pay the bills is by hucking T-shirts and underwear.
Personally I think it's important to fight for the value of your music, even if money seems dirty. To make sure people know that you don't think it's just more bits and bytes, or just another bunch of silly tunes.
05/09/08
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lilt
i think you will find that ALL music aint worth jack
imho
05/09/08
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lilt
papergoose said: "i think music is going to be basically free... it IS basically free. I think were the money is going to come from is
1-merchandise
2-shows
3-donations
And I've found that I'm perfectly ok with that. If I like a band alot, after hearing mp3s from various places, I will go see them when they come to town. And probably buy a t-shirt or something. "
yes
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