"some thoughts on digital music distro"

[decadence]

One thing I have been known for over the years, is that I give my music away for free most of the time, using the “digital download” method. Pretention aside, I have been doing this far longer than it has been “popular”. Back in the day, mod music groups were doing the same thing, on BBS systems and over the early WWW for years. Some people did it with casettes out of the trunks of old cars, or standing in bars with free tapes. Some did far more outlandish things, and are a part of music history. But with me, I have always had several reasons for why and how I do it the way I do it.

Making money off music is hard work, and not as easy as some would believe, when you are in fact anti-record company. Being that I lean that way, I have had to basically do all this stuff myself, without suits, middlemen, and press kits. This means I work much harder than some mainstream, well known megastars, who have a manager, a publicist, a tour manager, a legal person, and all that. True they have legions of fans, and make gazillions, but at the end of the day, they are under contract to make more, and give more, to the demands of other people. I am not under said demands, and thus have a freedom that is truly wonderful for me. I may never grace a magazine cover, but I have a growing audience of people who appreciate the work I have done, and continue to do, and that satisfies me. That is the point, is it not?

Walk into a Best Buy. Check out a major album like, say, from the band 311, or something known to large wads of people. Now, expect to pay $15 or more, depending on if it is DVD-AUDIO, or DVD Edition, or whatnot. You get about an hour of music (sometimes less) for the cost of a pizza and a soda. You go home and you listen to it, then you realize you could have bought gasoline with that money. Or that you in fact like 2 songs on the 12 song release. You feel you’ve “been had”. The mental images go on. My point is, using the “digital download” methodology ensures that people can download something, and if they like it, keep it, but if not, delete it, and they haven’t really lost time, or coin.

But then enter the iTunes and all that. Although I see the benefits of said means of reaching audiences, I find the motivations behind the entire cottage industry to be misleading, at best, and insidious at worst. For one thing, people CAN and people WILL steal audio. Since the first cassette recorder was fused with a radio, people have been “making copies” of what they want to hear. It’s just that simple. Suing them gave rise to paranoid rants and blogs about rights and humanities, but the suits did not stop anyone, and in fact made more people AWARE that music is there for the grabbing. I think the iTunes service and things like it were created as a deterrent to music theft. People want instant gratification, and they want it NOW, and I think digital downloads offer that in ways that you know, stealing a CD won’t really cater to. So people are lulled into this “it costs me 25 cents for a song by beck, so I am winning”. I disagree. Music should be an expressive art form, and if one succeeds at it, milk and cookies! But that should take a backseat to the actual expression itself. I think that after the era of Beethoven, and the advent of the recording studio, human beings lost their artistic merit and just took up the machine. Yes, there is much beauty in commercial AND Indie label musical efforts, but there is always, without release, that underlying drone of the “corporate machine”. I frown on it.

That being said, I have recently decided to start releasing new material both as free downloads, for those that love that, and also as buyable CD’s, but not on a business model that people interested in making cash would consider “sensible”. I will post the CD versions of my albums for no more than $6.50 apiece, and from that, I will take home literally 80 cents per order. That is basically cutting my own throat. Most people who download my work will not bother ordering it, if it is free, you say. Well you are missing the point. Some of us like to just have a physical copy, a roadmap, if you will, of the work we have done, a legacy that is tangible, that can be held and appreciated as a finished work.

So, basically, I am against the record store goliaths, but I nibble at their testicles. heh.

[Draconis]

Being just about to relase a Demo EP mysle,f I have to say that this is not the way I'm going to go. If some record company wants to pay me to write music, you can bet I'm gonna take the cash! I'm gonna be using myspec and the like with lower quality tracks as advertising, and if people want a CD then they can buy it from me or off the web.

I'd like to be able to make a living off of music, so, I have to be at least a little mercenary about it.

[decadence]

Being just about to relase a Demo EP mysle,f I have to say that this is not the way I'm going to go. If some record company wants to pay me to write music, you can bet I'm gonna take the cash! I'm gonna be using myspec and the like with lower quality tracks as advertising, and if people want a CD then they can buy it from me or off the web.

I'd like to be able to make a living off of music, so, I have to be at least a little mercenary about it.

A - your icon is pure badass.

B - I see where you are coming from, and I wish you success! I only hope that when your success finds you, you don't lose sight of your passion during the cash register dings in the middle distance!