Feed a musician
I did something today that I haven't done in over five years. I bought an album. That's not to say that I haven't listened to anything new in five years, I've just SUPPOSEDLY found new stuff sitting on my computer like everyone else does. Who says that I illegally download copyrighted music? That's a slanderous allegation.
I bought Radiohead's new album: In Rainbows. Radiohead have a special place in my heart, a heart that was broken with the tripe that they spewed out for Hail To The Thief but was mended with The Eraser. Why is In Rainbows so special that I've dedicated a post to it? It's shit hot by the way, but there's another reason. I haven't used dot points in a while...
How did one album achieve all of these monumental feats in one fell swoop when most other albums are hard-pressed to achieve even just one? Radiohead ignored the record companies and released the album themselves on the Internet, and let people pay what they wanted for it. Radiohead have made their new album available for download for whatever the customer wants to pay for it, including nothing. I paid AUD$10 for it, not because that's what it cost, but because that's what I wanted to pay. That's $10 more than I would have paid for it otherwise, and about $8 more than Radiohead would have seen if a recording company had released it. What a great idea. If every fourth person pays what I paid for it and everyone else took it for free, Radiohead would still be in front versus releasing it through a record company.
There's nothing new about selling music on the Internet, though it's usually crippled with DRM. DRM (Digital Rights Management) is a way to ensure that a file is only used in a manner that someone (hardly ever the artist) deems appropriate. In theory it guarantees a strict distribution channel. In practice DRM ensures that you can't always do all the cool stuff, like stick it on your portable music player or play it on a friend's computer. Sometimes it goes above and beyond reasonable protection, such as disabling the content after a period of time, or installing all kinds of crazy crap on your computer without your knowledge.
The goal of DRM is to ensure that the content is only used in a manner determined well before the file arrives on your computer, if it's allowed to get that far. File systems aren't designed for such a requirement, so DRM has been implemented as a horrendous mess, crippling the content so badly that the audience doesn't want to own it, let alone share it. I liken it to buying a new shirt, but the electronic anti-theft tag never comes off.
Is DRM worth it? Radiohead think not. Amazon think not. Now the head of Yahoo Music thinks not. The convenience gained from going DRM-free can not be understated. I know that this has been said over and over again, and repeating it here won't make the record labels change their tune (heh, great pun). The fact is that modern music's target market isn't moralising Radiohead lovers, but kids in school who have no objections to sharing Avril Lavigne's latest abortion with fifty of their friends. In high school I was the first kid to buy a CD burner. It was $400 and it only went 1x speed, but man, it was popularity in a little grey box!
Now it's time for my Zen moment. Is music an art form? Is music a consumable? Is it an idea? An algorithm? There's money in it for sure, but does that mean that music needs to be treated as a product? At the very least products have to not interfere with their environments. Do no harm.
Sorry for such a serious post. Here's a semi-related YouTube to make up.
The one thing this post did for me, was remind me how much i <3 Aria Giovanni. Fuck I used to abuse my self looking at her when i was a teenager.
Aww now it's a pic of Riley Mason. Same as above applies, but it wasn't when I was a teenager it was like... actually now.
Shit, Aria did it for me too when i was a little, wildly masturbating teenager.
these days i have no idea who i'm frantically batting over. i stopped caring about names.
A post about art-as-commodity gets threadjacked (heheheh) into masturbation in less than 3 posts, a bit like art school without the cloud of obfuscating theory.
…by the way, art is commodity and anyone who tells you otherwise is fishing for an arts grant. The relationship between artist and dealer/fixer/patron may be poisonous but is always symbiotic.
I prefer my website. This one has too many words and makes sense. What do words like obfuscating, implemented and popularity mean?
Art is only a commodity if you're selling it. Everyone has the ability to give their artistic works away for free. I actually see it as a privelige to be able to express yourself artistically, especially in a public forum. I think there's three mindsets in artists when it comes to selling their works; i call them "Break Even", "Make a Living" and "Commercial Glutton". Obviously, Mr Break Even just wants to recoup any costs incurred int eh production/execution of the artwork. Guitars don't pay for themselves and neither does studio time or a home recording setup (altho knowing the right ppl gets you a long way for free). These types of artists usually put their own money into a project first up anyway, and unless they get "serious" about performing won't recoup that investment. Which leads us to "Make a Living" guy, who plays the music industry game insofar as they try to put out "proper" releases and play gigs, gather a following, etc. Most bands fall into this category and they range from the type that just wanna play music and are kind of peer-influenced into doing those things because "that's just what you do in a band" to the other end of the scale, those who seriously treat it as a business, know their target audience, go for all the grants and comps and strategise to create the largest fan base in the least amount of time. Which of course segues us into the "Commercial Glutton" mindset - "artists" who are really just business people and whose main motivation is profit, not creativity, ala the shit you hear on commercial radio stations because those bands do more advertising.
The same thing can be applied to artists in different mediums - the graph artist on the street does it for the love of it and probably recognition amongst select group, and even risks being penalised by law for his art. The local hippie who's work adorns all his own walls will generally try to have the odd gallery showing and perhaps try to sell some shit on the web for a LOT more than the materials cost, but is still originally motivated by his own creativity and need for catharsis. Those who work for large design companies or do graphic design for websites or who really make a business out of selling their works, a probably generally motivated by the monetary rewards for the process, not the process it self or the personal rewards.
Holy crap i've dribbled on. Oh well, back on topic, Radiohead have always been a forward-looking band. I've been saying for years that this is what bands with integrity should do - people that aren't going to pay for it can't be forced to by slapping a price-tag on it, or even using DRM. If you're not going to get any money out of them it's still bettter for them to have your works so that they can write reviews about it and spread word of mouth about it, from a purely marketing pov. If you give them the option of paying what they can, getting something will be better than getting nothing. Then you get ppl like us who are impressed with the gesture and feel like giving them money simply because we respect that they're not demanding it. This is also a great thing for weeding out shit bands - if you only get ppl who REALLY like your stuff "donating" money, you have to be good, and good usually means at least coming from the heart and not being motivated by the cash in the first place. Although judging by the fact that morons will pay money to get the latest rapper's formulaic tripe as the ringtone on their phone, i guess a lot of losers will get by on that level of flash-in-the-pan interest. Then again, only the dedicated will be willing to work a day job and put their own money into their art. These commercial pop "princesses" with their ridiculous music video budgets and hype machine simply won't be able to exist, because they won't have a record company and all the hard-earned of all that companie's "lesser" bands propping them up.
Ranty out.
what the fuck is going on when a comment is longer than the post it's replying to?
wiseguy, time to make a blog of your own.
“…Those who work for large design companies or do graphic design for websites or who really make a business out of selling their works, a probably generally motivated by the monetary rewards for the process, not the process it self or the personal rewards.”
*sigh*
Since you are all in IT picture this as a Boolean thing. The fields “1=Shameless Self Promoter”, “2=Interested in Money”, and “3=Genuinely Very Talented” can overlap (Jeff Koons=1&2, Ezra Pound=1&3, Andy Warhol=1, 2&3). None of these excludes any of the others unless you've drunk the “art for arts sake” kool-aid or think that performance art is interesting and worthwhile.
George Bool would be flipping bits in his grave! I've been out of the programming world for a while, but as far as i know Boolean variables are either true or false... so three states that are neither of these is not really hitting it up boolean-style. Of course i take your point. And i reject it. Of course not everyone "interested in money" is evil - this is why i included "Mr Break Even" and "Mr Make a Living" to juxtapose "Mr Commercial Glutton" and somewhat mitigate the chance this is what you thought i was saying. Oh well. To put it another way, think of artistic integrity and artistic profit being on a sliding scale. A person only has so much time and resources. Once they start to put more of those into making money, paying more attention to marketing their art than they do to creating it, or letting market trends color their creative process, their art will generally suffer, and how could it not? In the "art or product" question, the answer is clearly derived in any individual case by intent. If you're making something you want to sell, then this requirement will have a hand in every creative decision you make - it's an exercise in marketing, whether talent is involved or not. Conversely, if you're simply expressing yourself and you don't care if it makes you any money or if anyone is even exposed to it (and once again, regardless of level of talent) then i would say that's art. Plus, everyone knows to be a truly great artist you must be a tragic figure living in abject poverty, be considered a freak for most of your life and die without your true genius ever being widely recognised, which will of course happen a few short years after your death, which will raise the price of your post-humous body of work, ironically making your own death your first and only act of selling out ;)
Hmm, it would seem the boolean variable type is true or false, but boolean logic itself is concerned with the main operators NOT, AND and OR. So I retract my accusation that George wouldn't be happy with your usage. He'd probably be more pissed off i forgot the e on the end of his surname :D
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