A Reaction to RELEVANT Magazine’s “Why Music ‘Should’ be Free.”

from RELEVANTmagazine.com

This is my reaction to THIS ARTICLE, taken from Relevant Magazine online. If you feel like reading on, please read the original article first…

I started with a comment on the article, which grew a bit too long. Things grew, and I wound up here… BLOGGING. 2003-style. Soo… Enjoy my brainpuke?

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The article is all just a bit short-sighted in my opinion. It feels like our author is just naively trying to justify his Limewire library. Very few of his sources really apply to the specific realities of the music industry; Only an idealized notion of something that would be great if it actually worked.

Radiohead has the luxury of giving their music away for free only because the OLD system already made them famous. Plain and simple. There would be no “Weird Fishes” without “Creep.”

The fact of the matter is that we have yet to see any new, emerging artists make any sort of acceptable living while giving away the fruits of their labor for free.

Arguing that record labels should embrace “sideloading” as great promotion is a bit self-defeating. Labels exist to sell recordings. If they give everything away in the hopes of generating a buzz, then all they’ve done is make a band famous at their own expense. And they close up shop.

Granted, it can be said that the age of the record label is gone anyhow. Their function is essentially to help make artists known through their promotional budgets in exchange for the profits from the sale of their recordings. Musicians then actually make their living via live performances and merchandise sales. Or by licensing their intellectual property for use in import car commercials and/or silly dragon movies.

Unless you’re Creed (what a reunion, eh?), these merchandising/licensing revenues are nowhere near enough for an emerging artist to make rent with. I’d love to believe that fans care enough to support the arts that move them of their own “free-will” (nyuk nyuk), but I have yet to see it. All the talented artisans I know are scraping gas and ramen money together from city to city while touring on their vacation time away from “normal” jobs.

I understand the point that an actual digital recording could potentially serve as the “loss-leader” that hopefully motivates fans to see an artist live (maybe even buying a t-shirt while they’re there), but this is also a bit of a stretch. How many concerts have you been to in the past year? How much of those artists’ merchandise did you purchase? Now compare that with how many songs you have in your Limewire library, and it becomes evident that the average person is gonna have to make a LOT more trips out to see live shows before the math adds up.

Five years from now, smug articles will be written about why feature films “should” be free. Ten years from now, why attending professional sports games “should” be free. And everyone who watches said “free” films and games will whine about the amount of ads and product placement in them.

We’ve somehow become convinced that we’re ENTITLED to be moved, intellectually stimulated, and othewise entertained. “Here we are now, entertain us!” I blame Kurt Cobain. Then again, I also blame Al Gore whenever my A/C goes out…

Love and the global warming that chokes out art,
=j.lynn