The Freeload

The Freeload is dead, long live The Freeload

2010-09-22T13:32:00.005-04:00

Thanks for the memories, Blogger.
Please visit my new site

Nomad Editions: A New Model For Digital Magazines

2010-08-12T14:52:00.007-04:00

As eReaders and tablets continue their ascendence, we're sure to hear of a series of new business models and methods of distribution from digital publishers. The plan for Nomad Editions, featured this week in the Times, sets the search off into engaging territory. It combines a relatively low subscription rate ($24 for 52 weekly editions) with the sort of transparent and ethical model for compensating writers and editors that I've been advocating for the music industry. Broaching what I expect will be a central topic for publisher vacillation for years, the editors of Nomad are not employing hyperlinks for the content.

Sounds like progress:

"Writers will earn up to 30 percent of subscription revenue per edition per week, while editors will make 5 percent of the same revenue with an additional cut of the advertising dollars. Mr. Edmiston estimates that writers can make anywhere from $50,000 to $60,000 a year if their area of expertise attracts an average of 50,000 readers."

Merge Recs: "Devaluing Music Is Something That Concerns Me Greatly"

2010-08-12T10:24:00.002-04:00

A nice contextual follow-up to the Arcade Fire story on the LA Times Pop & Hiss blog yesterday. Label head and Superchunk-member Laura Ballance reveals that the Amazon price point I gave Merge so much credit for entertaining wasn't actually their choice.

"Unfortunately, that’s not up to us," Ballance said of Amazon's decision to lowball the price of "The Suburbs." Yet it certainly raises concerns about the value of the album, and what consumers will view as a reasonable price.
"Devaluing music is something that concerns me greatly," Ballance said. "But it’s hard to draw a hard line on it. At this point, people can download music for free if they really want to. If you’re trying to get people to buy music, people who wouldn’t otherwise, maybe that’s the way to do it. Just to make it so cheap that it tips the scale.
"It’s tricky," Ballance continued."I find the resistance I had five years ago to music getting cheap is being broken down over the years by relentless pressure. People want to pay less."
Amazon has since raised the price to $7.99, and Apple's iTunes store continues to sell the album at its standard $9.99 price. Sales of digital albums remain one of the industry's growth sectors. For the first half of 2010, downloadable album sales were up 13.7% compared to the same period last year.

On Arcade Fire: Are They Showing Us The Way?

2010-08-11T12:41:00.004-04:00

It's as if the entire music industry - bands, labels, distributors, consumers - have been trudging through a mucky swamp at permanent midnight for the last few years, looking for a way to detangle the digital mess of bigger audiences but shrinking revenues. The wandering party is so sweaty, dirty and tired that any new model or streaming service is too easily mistaken for a way out into a lasting dawn. It may be that we're so fixated on the answer to industry woes being something "new," that the real signposts toward future success go unnoticed or under-hyped.

It's hard to ignore Arcade Fire this week after they sold out Madison Square Garden and their new album The Suburbs reached #1 on both the UK and US charts. Their total US sales figure of 156,000 may be a bitter pill for record industry honchos who still entertain weepy recollections of million-unit debuts circa 2000, but for the rest of us the band is the kind of middle class success story we'd like to see more of in the digital age. In fact, Arcade Fire may have stumbled upon that elusive model for digital success while simultaneously offering lessons to consumers who are struggling to define their role in the industry in the wake of freeloading.

As Sasha Frere-Jones points out in this week's New Yorker, as much as Arcade Fire are thought of as an Indie band, the designation is more one of scale and attitude than business reality. The band released The Suburbs with the "major indie" Merge Records who has helped to build the band's career ever since their first LP, Funeral. Frere-Jones writes:

Watching an independent band sell out the Garden and top the charts while compromising very little—Arcade Fire released eight different album covers for “The Suburbs”—is inspiring, but it isn’t a complete revolution. The band still has a manager and a label who work on its behalf, commercially and artistically. Scott Rodger, Arcade Fire’s manager, described the label’s role as “manufacturing and distribution—floating the expense, executing the marketing and retail plans that we have approved, and insuring that the music is available on all credible D.S.P.s,” or digital service platforms.

The band is unusually independent in the fact that they retain the rights to their recordings and license them to Merge. That says a lot about the self-determination of the band but also the flexibility of Merge. The parties share profits and focus on the physical product, demonstrated by the printing of multiple covers for the album which helped consumers to feel they were investing in a unique piece of art. But their fearlessness in engaging with the digital platforms available is what's really striking and even inspiring as the music industry searches for clues.

The $10 price for digital albums remains fair in many peoples eyes but it isn't driving the volume and market growth that most expected from digital. Arcade Fire took this into account while resoundingly maintaining the intrinsic value of their recorded music. The album is offered on iTunes for the usual dime rate, but on their website they offer high quality (FLAC and lossless) digital versions of the album for just $8 through Topspin (whose CEO blew yet another hole in the digital DIY mythology today). The band's most aggressive and brilliant move was to allow a limited time download of the album for $4 from Amazon's MP3 store. It will be interesting to get the exact figures, but that deal certainly helped to drive their first week sales and all the free publicity they're getting along with it. So, here we see a fiercely independent band that is making it on their terms with the critical help of a record label that is big enough to give the band the support they need, but small enough to adjust and evolve in the marketplace. Though I doubt whether we'll ever settle on a digital "ideal," this looks awfully close.

But who is ultimately responsible for this success? It's not the band or their label, neither of whom were in control of the outcome. No, the fans and consumers who rewarded the band and label's work by happily paying for the album made this happen. In this discussion of freeloading, my elemental angle is that industry can make all the changes and innovations in the world, but ultimately its up to the consumer to accept their responsibility to invest in the cultural voices they value and that's certainly what happened here. For a week, we can all see what happens when rights holders and their fans manage to meet one another half way. The healthy first week sales will build the band's name recognition, help their subsequent touring, and build the foundation for the band's long-term success. This also rewards Merge for their investment and increases the likelihood of them being able to find and promote the next Arcade Fire, currently languishing out in Myspace land.

Something to keep in mind is the immense popularity of Arcade Fire relative to nearly any other Indie band. They are certainly an exception to the rule and have an unusually large audience to draw upon for support. Who knows what number of their fans freeloaded the album with no intention of paying compared to those 156,000 who actually rewarded them for their work. It wouldn't be too hard to find negatives here, but what animates me in this debate is the potential the Arcade Fire case taps into. Given the efficiencies of the internet and the expanded market it provides, the degree to which our culture can become sustainably diverse, stimulating and democratic is limited only by the willingness of consumers to recognize their role in the matter, step up to greet it, and turn that potential into a sudden reality.

Comments, Comments...?

2010-08-10T11:50:00.006-04:00

Received a few notes about the Amanda Palmer post (below) and that a place for reader comments was desired here. I suspended the comment option a few weeks ago for a couple of reasons.

First of all, few people were commenting to my posts so I didn't perceive a huge loss taking place. That may have related to my registration requirement for comments - perhaps the worst strategy for building an active blog audience - for the great majority of time that this blog has been around.

Aside from the thoughts about how to build a web audience, I asked myself how useful comment sections really were. Is a user really engaging more strongly with a set of words and ideas if they have the option to blurt out a reaction below? Initially I didn't think so, but that led me to another question. When you comment to a blog, to whom are you actually writing?

The author? Sometimes, but usually there's an easy way to contact the writer through email and leaving a comment isn't necessarily more convenient. I don't think that's what primarily attracts people to comment sections.

When you comment, you're communicating with an idea rather than with a person. But how does one actually communicate with an idea? Well, you don't. We process ideas or act upon them. We can argue for or against an idea, but it's always one way argument. We communicate with other people about ideas, but never with the ideas themselves.

So, from comment boards we most often get a punchy and emotionally charged series of reactions, rather than an organic back and forth of conversation and deliberation that actually leads to something. Reactions don't filter themselves out in such a way where the best ones rise to the top. They simply form an exhibitionist mess. And that mess of communication which we find in the media and government is as central to the times we live in as anything else. This is ironic given that the internet is, yes, the greatest tool of communication ever known to man and one might expect problems to become easier to intelligently identify and solve in this age rather than more difficult. I'm coming to believe that's one of the central paradoxes of the information age.

I suppose the point is that the Web 2.0 tools of superficial democratization like reader comments are amusing as all hell, but in my experience aren't very constructive at the end of the day.

But, ah what the hell...comments are back on.

PS - On this subject, everyone should read George Packer's piece on the dysfunctional Senate in last week's New Yorker. Depressing, but important.

On Amanda Palmer and the Efficacy of T-Shirts

2010-07-29T08:55:00.003-04:00

(image/shirt from the I Buy Music. Not Music T-Shirts campaign on Copyright and Technology)

Can we use reason and pragmatism to combat and bring a sense of balance to freeloading? Or, as I suspect most consumers believe, is it an unwieldy phenomenon too viral for considered human manipulation?

Freeloading is a case of human technology distributing human creations to human consumers. It is inherently malleable and dependent upon individual choice. It's a controversy that percolates and bubbles over with confusions and false arguments that quickly turn hand-wringing into surrender and, finally, appropriation. But in time, as we are seeing ten years into this controversy, that percolation boils down to form a simple residue that can be scraped up and seen for what it truly is.

Take, for example, the case of that clichéd rationalization from freeloaders (and their apologists) that the disappearance of records and record sales is totally acceptable, because buying concert tickets and merchandise are more efficient ways to support artists. This temporarily liberates a freeloading mind that may otherwise feel some sense of responsibility and guilt for their actions. However, no one will be looking over their shoulder to ensure that the freeloader is, in fact, buying concert tickets or merchandise as a substitute. It pushes off uncomfortable realities for a little while longer.

I suspect that most people who believe in such "industry must die" fantasies are bigger fans of technology than they are of music. To them technology is worth investment and respect, while the content that makes the technology hum is discarded as being relatively worthless. And this brings the freeloader to advance an incredibly dubious merchandise argument.

"I love the music, but what a reprehensible t-shirt"

I used to be much more energized by wearing a band t-shirt. In college or high school, say, when defining your person by the art you consume is a far more vital, high stakes game. Though it's hard to really know, considering the emotional fall-off that comes with age, I'm just as interested (if not more) in finding new music today as I was back then. But I'm much less likely to buy a band t-shirt.

It's rare that my enthusiasm for a band will match up with a t-shirt I think actually looks cool. For all the music I've been excited over, I think I've gotten two band t-shirts in the past four years - and one was given to me by one of the band's (Deerhunter) friends. Most t-shirts look pretty bad - that's the truth. Why buy something that you have zero use for? Instead of a record collection or a well-stocked iTunes library of legal songs, do people really imagine the new manifestation for artist support being a cardboard box filled with t-shirts worn a couple of times, if ever? If you love a band's work, it makes sense for you (as a selfish individual who wants them to make more of the work) to compensate them for that. Going to shows and buying merch is great, of course, but it's all ancillary to the band's decision and investment in recording an album or EP - those songs that first entrance you through your iPod headphones or crappy computer speakers.

Incentives

Under the commodity system, we reward behavior and production through payment. The merchandise argument quickly crumbles after recognizing this basic condition of economics. If you're a music fan, then pay for the music. It's what the artist and their label is already asking of you. Humor them. By only investing in merchandise, one is rewarding everything but the actual art. This sort of substitution, amplified and taken over time, is devastating to the concept of a "music industry" and illogical for anyone who sees themselves as even a casual fan. It makes no sense. We're turning our musicians into bric-a-brac makers rather than masters of their art. Seems an odd use for the internet, the most advanced tool of human communication in history. Luckily, the remedy is simple: pay for the music you like and love.

Yeah, yeah...Amanda Palmer

Any NPR discussion of "the state of music" is incomplete without some mention of the singer Amanda Palmer and her experiments with finding revenue. She enlisted her Twitter followers to pay for merchandise, including random items that lay around her house. She made almost $20,000 in a matter of hours in 2009. Impressive and to be congratulated, no doubt. But is was also an isolated incident. A novel idea from an artist with a particular talent for cultivating an audience online. Cheers to her, but it proved to not be a sustainable model and fed into the problem of incentives. How could she sell her actual music, now that she'd staked her claim to merchandise?

Palmer had been on Roadrunner records, but the relationship soured. She left the label and struggled as an independent artist. Perhaps due to the exhaustion of using social media so extensively and having to devote herself to things other than her music, she decided to take a break from music this past year to instead perform in a production of the musical Cabaret. I respect Palmer as a musician and songwriter, but I find that chapter and the next in her story particularly ominous for the "music is free" crowd. She, the best and most visible success story freeloaders can point to, ended up releasing another album. But rather than produce more of her own material, the project was an example of the lazy "remixing" we come to expect from web 2.o artists built more on novelty than an expressive voice. She released an EP of Radiohead covers played on a ukulele, a project more suited to a high school talent show than a demonstration of the creative spark Palmer has already proved herself to be a keeper of.

She released the album and bundled merchandise on Bandcamp, a website that allows bands to sell their music directly to fans (and takes a 10-15% cut along the way). This was another novel success and she sold $15,000 worth of music and merchandise in a few minutes. She charged just 84¢ for the album itself to cover her performance royalty to Radiohead and the Bandcamp commission, leaving almost nothing for herself.

These bursts of support from fans are wonderful, don't get me wrong. But stretch this money out over time and she's flirting with the poverty line. After accounting for costs, it's hard to see these numbers building or sustaining a career. I hate to get personal, but for the sake of realism it should be noted that Ms. Palmer is engaged/married to the successful writer Neil Gaiman (congrats, you two) and it may be the case that her personal finances are less of a concern as a result of the union. Also, it turns out that this re-arranged model for supporting artists isn't terribly new.

In a recent interview with Bandcamp, it's revealed that Palmer was aided by a group of three others to make the enterprise work. These folks, I assume, are being compensated to some degree. So, you have an artist selling their work, helped by a small team of people heavily invested in the artist's success, with 10-15% of the profits going to a distributor.

Sounds a bit like that dinosaur institution from a bygone era. I whisper to myself about them from time to time, those antiquated "record labels."

Loess Hills by Sound Morrison (me) on Bandcamp

2010-07-24T14:12:00.003-04:00

All the writing I have done and will do on freeloading ultimately stems from my summer of 2008, when I recorded an albums-worth of demos out at my family's farmland in Minnesota and subsequently saw the reality of freeloading with new eyes. While I retain hope that I'll have (or engineer) the opportunity to finish more songs and play more shows, music has taken a distant backseat to writing for the time being.

However, I'm happy to have the newly-sequenced and edited album, Loess Hill, up on Bandcamp and available for free download in a variety of formats. Enjoy and share it as much as you like. Though Bandcamp allows (and encourages) its users to charge for their music I wouldn't feel right about charging for something that I know to be a rather crude, cheaply-made and unfinished recording. Sounds fine considering, but I still hear these as nascent demos. That said, enough people have been enthusiastic for my reluctant acceptance that the songs are, indeed, fit for (limited) public consumption. Other than the lack of any real low-end, I'll restrain myself from pointing out the recordings' many flaws. You can find them yourself. Do note, however, the chirping which back the final song, "Planes." Those are barn swallows in an actual barn, leaning down from nests of mud and grass, alerting one another to my musical threat from below.

Yes, it's free. This broaches an annoying misunderstanding of the freeloading debate, that by defending an artist's right to be compensated for their work I am somehow saying that every artist deserves to make a living.

What sometimes goes missing with freeloading is the basic reality that any artist in the digital age can very easily give away their music for free or decide to go DIY without a label - yet almost no one who hopes for a sustainable career does. By not giving music away (no matter how accepting their stated views on freeloading may be) artists are implicitly asking the consumer/fan for payment if the music has been consumed/enjoyed. By refusing to compensate the artist in this instance, while going on to enjoy their work in perpetuity, that fan becomes a freeloader and does their small part to erode and undermine the vitality and sustainability of our creative culture. No one believes that roundly rejected art and artists should be rewarded with lasting careers, but when art and artists that significant audiences indeed love also find themselves with scarce rewards, then we have the systemic cultural problems of freeloading on our hands. Here, we come to reject the power and potential of human communication itself and devalue ourselves along with the music.

Anyway, you enjoy the songs. And here's a clip from my first show at Coco66 which ended, as you'll see, with my loop pedal battery dying at the ideal time. I fear my debt of gratitude will never quite be paid to the videographer, one Nicholas Cirillo of Right On Dynamite and Nick's Picks fame.

Sound from Nicholas C on Vimeo.

On Returning

2010-07-24T12:52:00.005-04:00

Back in Brooklyn from the bucolic lands to the west where the moments reveal themselves as the glints of eternity and the sun illuminates grasses and trees and dirt which together compose a plain of relativity. I was settled in the terminal gulch where the patient waters of the past and future sunk in and nurtured an everlasting moment that bathes itself in work and leisure, life and death. A few days tapped from a few centuries. With a sudden turn, momentous immediacy turns into the abundance of perspective. A radical objective confronts radical subjectivity.

I watch myself checking headlines on Politico and The Daily Swarm - why? I've been killing myself to finish a proposal on music piracy - really?

Coming back into civilization makes a man feel useless. Which illusory narrative to rejoin? So many to choose and I wish I could wrap myself up in them all, swirling around me in the technicolored comfort of amusement until I die. I want to talk again about the political economy of mass media and worry myself sick. Makes me feel connected to real life. How about you?

The hesitation before logging on to Gmail is a surprise. I forget that Gmail exists. I'll be addicted again in a few days.

The inept transition fades, mostly with thanks. The tendrils of my nervous system stretch out once again to find familiar stimuli. Immediate reality again becomes a conversation piece. I'm recalling the old story I told myself, the one about utility.

On Ted Leo's semi-retirement: FreeLoading's chickens coming home to roost?

2010-07-07T17:53:00.005-04:00

One of the biggest reasons why the FreeLoading remains stuck in 2001 has been the lack of courage on the part of independent artists to communicate the economic realities of making music to their fans. After Metallica dragged their fans' names though the mud and the RIAA's ridiculously disproportionate lawsuits against individual FreeLoaders - the well of conversation became poisoned.

Afraid of appearing to side with anyone but the fans, musicians stayed quiet on their eroding sales receipts and the discussion became one-sided in favor of FreeLoading. Most voices against the practice came from industry representatives like major labels, the RIAA or the IFPI - easily discounted opinions in the eyes of fans. That's why it was so refreshing for me to interview The Future Of The Left's Andy Falkous last fall. After his well-publicized reaction to their album leaking, Falkous became that rare independent artist who was unafraid of calling a spade a spade, even if he risked losing a few fans for it.

When Falkous and I spoke about what could realistically be done to encourage FreeLoaders to begin paying for more of their content, he said:

"Well, I think they need to be aware of the consequences of their actions. But I think me saying what is going to happen is of no use to anybody. What’ll have to happen before people actively begin to question their behavior is to have a couple of bands on a similar level to ourselves basically have to call it a day or dramatically scale back their operation because of the mitigating economic situation in the music industry.

People don’t learn from saying, ‘don’t do this, it’s very bad.' People don’t learn from examples, they learn from the brutal examples of their lives."

And perhaps it is in this context that we ought to view the recent news from Ted Leo, that he's preparing to "dramatically scale back" his operation. From his recent interview, re-posted on Buzzgrinder:

"People don’t think record sales matter to musicians. If you’re selling less than 10,000 records, it probably doesn’t matter. And if you’re selling more than 100,000 records, it probably doesn’t matter. But if you’re selling somewhere in the middle, it can make a huge difference.
It’s a losing proposition for us at this point. It’s something we can’t keep doing. It’s a simple, unfortunate fact. In our particular case, it is totally tied to a downturn in record sales."

The DIY Dream

2010-06-29T17:58:00.003-04:00

From Paul Resnikoff today on Digital Music News, on the new efforts by marquee artists to max out ticket and merchandise prices in lieu of dropping record sales and what that means for cash strapped fans' ability to support new artists.

The question is what happens over the longer-term, and how the trend affects up-and-comers. Smaller gigs may become harder and harder to fill, and labels (and other entities) certainly have less cash to take risks. Meanwhile, free recording acquisition - in huge quantities - is becoming the norm, while once-hopeful cash generators like subscriptions (Spotify, MOG, Rhapsody, whatever) and paid downloads are struggling to ramp.
The DIY dream - which is yet to really pan out - is that smaller acts can grab a meaningful piece of the pie by transacting directly with their fans. But what happens when fans are still hungover from the last spending binge - from months ago? Or, are simply unwilling to pay even modest amounts for recordings? Seems like high-priced success is only making a relatively smaller number of artists rich. And that is a problem for everyone else.

Interview: GAYNGS n' Prince

2010-06-29T14:00:00.003-04:00

Suddenly I'm feeling quite 2005...

I woke up today, shaved and made it to my literary agency job by 9:30. There, I mindlessly scanned author contracts into the server while compulsively changing my Myspace profile song and listening to that new Akron/Family self-titled on repeat. I bemoaned my sorry post-collegiate existence on the subway ride home to Queens, listening to Feels on my obsolete CD Walkman and grabbed a Cuban sandwich under the deafening 7-train at 82nd street. When I reached my cluttered apartment, my brother was practicing his palmas along to a Flamenco album blasting in the living room. The grinding of my teeth accompanied the stereo's guttural screams overlain by my brother's jackhammer clapping. I fled for the bedroom and closed the door behind me. When I turned on my computer, I found an email from Marvin saying he'd posted another band interview of mine.

_____________________________________

Even if it reminds me of some not-so-special days of yore, I'm always happy to have something new up on Tiny Mix Tapes, the charmed music journalism kingdom of my college comrade Marvin Lin. Today, they posted my interview with Jake Luck of GAYNGS and Leisure Birds fame.

The interview centers on Jake's encounter with Prince at the recent GAYNGS show in Minneapolis, where I also attended college. It brought up memories of my time in that city where I absorbed the singular relationship between Minneapolis, Prince and First Avenue. I remembered an old friend of mine in the dorms who closely followed Prince's website, looking for coded messages. On random nights, Prince would use the website to coyly announce open parties at Paisley Park Studios, outside the city near Lake Minnetonka. The doors opened at about 1 am and the hundreds standing in line were each charged $7.77 to enter. Prince and his band would jam on stage until about 4am and, reportedly, the only food and drink provided was Doritos and Diet Pepsi.

The Letter

2010-06-22T13:25:00.002-04:00

If you happen to be perusing a bookstore magazine rack in the next few weeks, take a look at that experimental project of Stowe, Longfellow and Emerson - The Atlantic. I hope to get a byline in there someday, but for now I'll settle for the letter I have in the July/August issue. It's in response to Meghan McArdle's previous article on freeloading. You'll notice I was devising my Big Money article at the time I wrote the more bluntly executed letter:

As Megan McArdle notes, it is the abstract nature of digitized intellectual property that makes this debate so confused and confusing. Freeloaders trick themselves into thinking there’s nothing wrong with their actions, simply because they “feel okay.” But if consumers of the digital era eschew their responsibilities and refuse to pay for content, our culture will become more and more beholden to broad corporate branding and sponsorship. Music will no longer be made for fans; it will increasingly be marketed for use in bank commercials. Freeloaders who claim an anti-corporate posture are actually building a future in which desperate artists accept corporate patronage, and this is the tragic irony of the debate.
Chris Ruen
Brooklyn, N.Y.

The Lost Generation

2010-06-18T15:50:00.004-04:00

As was just pointed out to me today amidst a brief back-and-forth on Techdirt, a blog I try in vain to stay away from, this blog is a disaster. I mean, just look around.

There's still a "blogspot" address up there, as if it's still 2006. There aren't any ads so I'm obviously not making money off the thing, or even trying. If I manage to make the temporary effort to post every day, I become so mentally unhinged by it that I won't post anything for a month. The only genuinely entertaining element of most blogs - the combative comment sections - are conspicuously unattended. I routinely forget the standard practice to tag my posts - very unprofessional. And to top it all off, my most interesting posts are mere regurgitations of Glenn Peoples' work on Billboard.

Speaking of Glenn, he has a great post today.

In "Napster Generation May Not Be Lost," he references a recent Nielsen study which found that young, smartphone-hitched consumers watch more television as they age - which seems to contradict the notion that younger generations' shift away from "old media" will be a permanent one. Glenn draws a parallel with new/old debate still raging in the music industry:

"As consumers pass their teen years, they have more income and less free time than they did in the past. What cash-poor, time-rich teen isn’t going to seek out free music? ...So, the Napster generation may not have been totally lost as music consumers. Some may simply grow out of file-sharing as they age. Labels and music services need to keep this in mind. Just because some young consumers don’t buy music doesn’t mean they’ll never buy music or pay for a music service."

While I believe some college and even high school-aged consumers can be converted away from freeloading, it stands to reason that in the absence of funds there will always be a large segment of the 12-25 year-old set that freeloads. The key, for those of us who believe in finding a third way in this debate, is to concentrate on ways to convert those freeloaders who have grown a bit older, understand the value of being compensated for one's work, and have a little disposable income to invest in their music.

Say what you will about freeloaders, but they're highly conscious of the music industry. I believe their consciousness can be shifted from one where all digital content is believed to be free and the industry deserves punishment (as a means to mask their own skulking guilt) to a consciousness where consumers can feel good about monetarily supporting the careers of their beloved artists, writers and filmmakers.

In the case of music, this depends upon sectors of the industry providing consumers with increased transparency so people can feel confident in their money supporting an artist, rather than simply the interests of shareholders. This also necessitates freeloaders recognizing the validity - and value - of labels as partners in building artists' careers. As I've written, I believe independent labels are uniquely positioned to experiment with this concept. It may revolutionize the industry, finally, for the better.

The Illusory Promise of P2P Licensing

2010-06-16T14:53:00.004-04:00

In Glenn Peoples' business analysis on Billboard.biz today, he notes the paltry revenues generated by Limewire in spite of their lack of significant operating or licensing costs.

"One number makes clear a P2P service would have a hard time turning into a legitimate company while retaining its millions of users: $20 million. That's LimeWire's latest annual income. Think about that – the company that had the largest P2P application share in the U.S. could get only $20 million from its users ($34.95 per year for the Pro version) and advertisers. That's as much revenue as a $10 per month subscription service brings in annually from just 167,000 subscribers. Such low revenue flies in the face of arguments that labels should simply license P2P (this argument goes all the way back to Napster). Labels collect more money from iTunes in a single week than LimeWire made in an entire year. On revenue of $20 million, labels would get next to nothing from the most successful P2P application."

As he notes, this undermines the commonly held assumption that the record labels' fatal mistake was in refusing to license their content with Napster when they had the chance in 2001. If the labels had done so, the thinking goes, they could have altered the trajectory of online music, simultaneously reaping significant profits and adapting to make Freeloading work for their bottom line. Perhaps, as this post implies, the majors correctly realized there wasn't enough of a potential upside to make p2p licensing worth the risk. As with other "free" models and streaming services,so far the money just isn't there to sustain labels and musicians.

How can we expect a legal subscription or p2p site to gain the number of paying users needed to adequately scale the business in the age of Freeloading? Why would consumers choose to pay for a site that operates an awful lot like an illegal p2p and barely compensates artists, when they can opt for getting anything they want for free simply by entering a torrent search? This is an example of how Freeloading cripples the ability of labels, artists and businesses to find sustainable digital models for the industry, crowding out potential growth like some invasive digital species.

On Thom Yorke's Schoolbook Broadside

2010-06-11T12:29:00.002-04:00

A stiff example of the incoherence that permeates the Freeloading debate came this past week, when Thom Yorke's statements widely circulated that the music industry was a "sinking ship" that young artists ought to avoid. Sounding like a provocateur, Yorke claimed that it was “only a matter of time — months rather than years — before the music business establishment completely folds.”

Ominous as the future appears for the recording industry, it remains a multi-billion dollar one in the US. Quarter to quarter album sales are plummeting and digital sales have flatlined this year. But could it really expire in "months?" Sort of like a newspaper columnist bemoaning the "death" of print despite total circulation remaining in the tens of millions.

Yorke's words rang hollow for many in the blogosphere and Paul Resnikoff at Digital Music News noted the particular hypocrisies of Yorke, an artist who made millions with the support of a major label and still chooses to do business will major label distributors, telling young artists to self-release their albums. For my own goals of pushing the Freeloading debate into more realistic and constructive territory, I was frustrated to see another artist who has clearly built a career on the back of label support providing consumers with an excuse to Freeload and ignore basic truths of the music business.

Before taking an artist's potshots against labels seriously, we all ought to ask why we're paying attention to the artist in the first place. It's probably because they've enjoyed the promotional advantages of label support in the past and present. To pretend otherwise on their part is disingenuous, if not destructive. The major labels everyone still hates, on account of the RIAA lawsuits and any number of other cherry-picked indignities, quickly become symbolic of all labels. As a commenter wrote in reaction to my latest article:

"I cannot see why record companies have to exist. Artists need to take control of their music and make it available for purchase on their web site. I would buy songs from an artists web site, but nowhere else. Not only will this motivate artists to create music that people like (as opposed to album filler), but a million selling artist can actually pocket a million. Artists win, consumers win. Record companies fade away."

Labels are not inherently devilish institutions out to exploit artists and force them to make bad music. Somehow this idea has become an accepted one. When broaching this discussion of what is in an artist's best interest, fans ought to first recognize that the artist is already acting in their best interest by entering a partnership with a label. Sometimes these partnerships sour, other times they're beneficial for all involved parties. Whether a beloved artists' label deserves to exist isn't a Freeloaders decision to make and it's just another example of the entitlement issues which form that ideology's bedrock. Forgetting Freelaoding's ideological assumptions for a moment, look around...everyone's on a label, with very few exceptions. This is because the role of a label to spotlight an artist and assist with promotion and distribution is as important as ever. A new artist can't do it all alone. In the twisted logic of Freeloading, the rather obvious value of label support is misunderstood as being a fundamentally sinful enterprise.

I'm not nearly as suspicious of major labels as in my formative years, but I still empathize with the sentiment. That's why I go out of my way to support independent labels. As the L Magazine pointed out amidst the Thom Yorke absurdity, independent labels who treat their artists well, pay higher royalty rates and come closer to epitomizing the rosy picture of the 1960s record industry (as described by Yorke in the video above) are somehow left out in the cold; innocent bystanders of the major label backlash. We ought to pivot the Freeloading discourse to a direction that actively supports such indies and their efforts to develop new artists. It's simply a matter of consumers and artists promoting such a constuctive attitude and independent labels doing what they can to meet paranoid Freeloaders halfway by publicizing their significant artist investments and higher royalty rates. By Indies leading the charge toward such a "Fair Trade" movement in music, a paradigm shift that's sustainable and realistic for the industry may be easier to achieve than many believe.

This shouldn't be about governments and labels beating up on Freeloaders, artists beating up on labels, or Freeloaders beating up on artists and labels. As Ed O'Brien notes below, let's forget about the past and retrain ourselves to look for pragmatic solutions to improve the environment for emerging artists looking for a foothold. If we aren't prepared to do that, this discussion is a just a sad distraction and a waste of everyone's time.

Below is another example of an artist being blithe to reality. Sigur Ros has been supported by Fat Cat, EMI, Geffen and XL. They are still on a label and an industry source informed me that the deal is non-binding. They can shed their label anytime they wish.

Notes on "No Sellouts Means More Selling Out"

2010-06-07T13:43:00.002-04:00

Wanted to provide a bit more information related to my article, "No Sellouts Means More Selling Out" out today on The Big Money.

As the recent MIA-NYT controversy so blatantly demonstrated, there is a fundamental degree of manipulation involved in constructing a piece of journalism. An angle is developed and a sufficient amount of material must be found or tailored to support said angle. One would hope that, most of the time, the writer quotes a subject in good faith. Turning a just-okay story into something more biting with a perfect quote, however, proves tempting even if the quote isn't totally accurate or is inappropriately out of context.

Quotes, though, are always out of context to some degree. If they weren't, we'd be reading dense transcripts all day rather than moderately entertaining articles. Still, the more transparency the better. Above is my source for the Doctorow "whore" quote at the end of the piece. He begins talking about copying and digitization at the 2:00 mark, the Pepsi question comes at 6:10, and the "whore" comment follows at 7:30.

The ghost of the RIAA lawsuits and Metallica v. Napster still haunt the Freeloading debate. We need to get past that history, and move forward to find solutions to the vexing problems of free content and intellectual property rights where consumers and creators can try to meet halfway. I hope we can build a sizable market of active consumers who recognize the broken logic of Freeloading the dystopian future it suggests for mass culture and mass communication. The first step is to abandon utopian notion that all digital content is free and ask ourselves what we, not "information," want digital culture to deliver for consumers and creators.

More Notes:

- Information is Beautiful published this graphic, breaking down how well various online music services compensate artists for their content. As I read about the inability of new models to bring sustainable profits to artists and labels, I've become more and more aware of the efficiencies of the commodity system (digital or otherwise) as it pertains to creative culture. Also it's becoming clear that as much as Freeloading undercuts the supposedly old model of record sales, it also undercuts new models like subscription services and micropayments. Freeloading is a cultural problem of existential proportions.

- Once corporate patronage in music is pointed out, you can see it everywhere. Pitchfork's news headlines this week dually function to document its rise. Daft Punk and others recently appeared in an adidas ad. Wavves is also releasing a single through Mountain Dew's Green Label Sounds. Vice recently entered into an extensive branding partnership with Intel involving many artists, from Sleigh Bells to Interpol.

- This is arguably unrelated, though quite ironic given my use of the subway musician analogy in "Myth Of DIY." Here's a story about a New York City subway musician who has been branded by Axe Body Spray.

Playing Dumb

2010-06-07T10:14:00.004-04:00

The video above neatly wraps up a critical point in Freeloading discourse, when Freeloaders argue that digital copy of a piece of music, a film or a piece of writing isn't theft; it's an action comparable in harmlessness to breathing in the digital realm. I'm endlessly frustrated by the sentiment and for this I first blame the RIAA.

As the RIAA began leveling their lawsuits against consumers, infamous spokesperson Hilary Rosen made the absurd claim that each Freeloaded music track equaled a lost sale. This may have been forgivable if confined to a theoretical discussion of ethics in the digital age, but instead Rosen used the argument as justification for the astronomical lawsuits filed against Freeloaders. So, a fundamentalist argument by the RIAA begat a fundamentalist argument by the Copyleft crowd.

Wading through the binary wilderness today, the Copyleft argument that no copies equal theft because "the original still exists" is bandied about as a justified placeholder for the lurking reality of blatant personal irresponsibility. It's one of a few arguments Freeloaders use to keep their better ethical angels' mouths clamped shut. To hide behind the technical reality that an original still exists in the face of the realities of consumers' personal experience and crumbling music industry revenues (which just happen to align with the advent of Freeloading) is to play dumb on the functional reality of freeloading and does a disservice to other perfectly valid criticisms of copyright law, ones which deserve attention.

The only thing more ridiculous than saying every copy equals a lost sale is to say that NO copy equals a lost sale.

Is All Art Equally Derivative?

2010-06-07T08:33:00.004-04:00

To celebrate a new Freeloading article going up today, I thought I'd give ol' Marshall and Norman a rest and actually post an item or two.

In my continued research on Freeloading and the related debates over copyright law, I've repeatedly encountered the idea that all art is essentially derivative and no artist can claim authorship (or ownership) of intellectual property. This often stems from a discussion of about the legality of mash-up artists like Girl Talk.

The topic is certainly fascinating and as a lifelong fan of hip-hop I care about artists' abilities to creatively sample without intellectual property owners holding their works hostage. Don't know if mash-ups always fall into the category of "creative sampling" though. What would Girl Talk's music be without the novelty of hearing old songs in a new context? It's all about recognition and being in on the joke. Girl Talk is a great DJ, he's a terrible example of the indignities of copyright law. If anything, he's struck me as an example of what's potentially good about the copyright system, when intellectual property owners are able to make conditional decisions whether or not to litigate. Despite all of his obvious samples, Girl Talk has never - to my knowledge - been sued. Doesn't that speak well of the system?

Fair Use is tricky and ought to be tested in the courts as much as possible, but the underlying confusion of authorship and borrowing is no excuse to throw ones hands up in the air and decide that individual creativity is merely a matter of "remixing." That's a cold attitude of humanity and art. There are only so many "ideas" out there but the potential expressions of those ideas, and their quality, are infinite. Such expression is what we're really talking about, when we talk about intellectual property and art. One can deconstruct culture down to boring additions and machinations, but I'd argue that the holistic reality is much more mysterious, and lends weight to the idea that some of us are more tapped-in to creative forces than the rest, and their financial ability to spend time with their art (being compensated for it) and share their talent with the rest of us is in everyone's best interest.

The Townes video above reminded me of creativity's essential mystery.

2010-04-26T19:20:00.001-04:00

On Record Store Day and "I Need That Record!"

2010-04-16T12:26:00.009-04:00

On of the biggest reasons for writing "The Myth Of DIY" last year was personally observing the death of my favorite hometown record store in Milwaukee, Atomic Records. As is the perception of many of the Freeloaders I criticize and challenge, before the record store closed, the ill effects of Freeloading never seemed quite real.

I didn't perceive any less music being released or made, nor did I sense the quality of music was noticeably declining. The practice of Freeloading, though I hadn't participated in it since 2003, remained in the abstract realm of the victimless crime. I didn't hear many artists, independent labels or record store owners causing a fuss so there was little to believe otherwise. When Atomic closed, reality hit home that our collective actions have consequences, and a record store a couple blocks away from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee no doubt shuttered because college kids sequestered in dorm rooms with broadband connections were presented with little reason to pay for their music. A compelling argument, or means for them to understand the consequences of their actions hadn't been made. The urgency of waking people up to their behavior is why I chose, in "Myth Of DIY," to call people assholes. It was a bit provocative, but intellectually honest and driven by my displeasure for a community that is blind to its own self-destruction. Independent music lovers who refuse or are too lazy to keep their record stores alive are like arsonists setting fire to their own homes, Christians demolishing their Cathedrals, or Muslims bulldozing Mecca.

Is file-sharing any substitute for the actual sharing that goes on in independent record stores?

Tomorrow, we celebrate Record Store Day - one effort at raising the consciousness of consumers. Today, Pitchfork has been kind enough to host Brendan Toller's soulful documentary on the demise of the record store, "I Need That Record!"

It seems that Toller's inspiration also stemmed from his hometown record store, Connecticut's Record Express, having closing. He ably renders the melancholy and profound loss of community represented by the shuttering of stores across the country. I can imagine a few of our more reactionary friends online calling the film an overly-sentimental look at the technological aberration that "was" the record industry, now dying as it should be. Sometimes, though, sentimentality and meaning inhabit the same space.

In watching Toller's rehashing of the changes to the music industry, the major labels' long history of payola, price-gouged consumers, the RIAA lawsuits, the rise of Freeloading and subsequent closing of record stores and bankruptcy of record labels, I kept thinking, "There's a lot of blame to go around, here." My frustration was rekindled with how hatred for major labels has been transferred into a convenient argument and excuse for people Freeloading. If consumers really hate the majors, then truly boycott them and support the independent labels that you believe in. Write a physical letter or blog post addressing how the majors ought to change. Be constructive. As one person in the documentary asks, "Why can't the majors sell $10 CDs?" Someone at Universal was thinking the same thing.

Though I enjoy Glenn Branca's disgruntled persona, I find his shooting-from-the-hip declarations in the film that money=crime or that art has nothing to so with mass culture as misleading and confusing to impressionable minds. Branca needs some money to survive, after all. Money can be an uncomfortable and imperfect system to assess value, but it's our system and everyone else's, so let's work with it. What would Branca say of the Talking Heads, whose avant-garde art very much penetrated mass culture? Of course Branca has chosen not to engage with mass culture himself, which is just fine, but his broad statement on "true art" falls flat.

Chuck D is profoundly prescient in a clip from his Charlie Rose debate with Lars Ulrich years ago, when he says that MP3s and Napster had given "power back to the people" as opposed to wealthy major labels.

As he says, we do have the power as consumers. However, have we accepted responsibility for that power or do we run away from the concept and passively wait for someone else (another top-down corporation or government program) to realize a new model for us? "People have done it to themselves," one of the documentary's newly unemployed record store owners says of the decline in independent shops and places. "It's all a result of our own ignorance."

My own angle is underlined by Freeloading's unintended consequence of building an artistic culture more desperate for and dependent upon corporate patronage than ever before. Using the example of music, the internet threatens to make us that much more isolated and atomized as consumers, as "Chompers" says. The documentary repeatedly hits on this current of thought, that technology is disassociating ourselves from both community and our own humanity, and replaces them with mere illusions of both.

I'm not an extremist - I don't think Freeloading will ever die and I don't think casual Freeloaders should be paying fines or going to jail (though I think it's just for those like The Pirate Bay, who know exactly what they're doing, to serve some jail time). Only in collaboration with the commodity system can the internet, perfect copying machine that it is, deliver on it's remarkable potential. We need to find some commodity models for digital content that we're comfortable with, and then actively support them. Until we get there, let's all promote the idea that Freeloading all of your music, even if that person goes to a concert now and again, just isn't cool. (Perhaps we can conceptualize what's cool/accepted as being an expression of social contract.)

Tomorrow I know Marjorie & Ron over at Permanent Records will have something nice for me...holding out hope that James at Sound Fix has more Gonjasufi vinyl in stock...and I'll stop by C0-Op along the way for something unexpected. This is the only day out of the year you'll read-me-write this, but...

HAPPY SHOPPING.

James Pants Is Raining All Over You

2010-04-13T09:54:00.004-04:00

America,

They say you should learn something new every day. Yesterday, for example, I learned that Doug Davis is not a good pitcher. And I learned (again) that watching baseball is a tremendous waste of time, bordering on self-destructive activity. It is when you're a writer, at least. I've also learned that keeping up this blog doesn't come naturally. The internet itself, wonderful as it is, is constantly tempting me to waste my time. James Sturn, a graphic novelist, wrote about this subject recently for Slate. It's a great article. Read it. The crux is that he's giving up internet use completely for four months:

Over the last several years, the Internet has evolved from being a distraction to something that feels more sinister. Even when I am away from the computer I am aware that I AM AWAY FROM MY COMPUTER and am scheming about how to GET BACK ON THE COMPUTER. I've tried various strategies to limit my time online: leaving my laptop at my studio when I go home, leaving it at home when I go to my studio, a Saturday moratorium on usage. But nothing has worked for long. More and more hours of my life evaporate in front of YouTube. Supposedly addiction isn't a moral failing, but it feels as if it is.

There is no way I could give up the internet for more than a few hours. Maybe a day or two. But Sturn's angle leads me to specifically wonder about the effects of the internet on creative people, who may already be prone to procrastination. Can the same spark of creative obsession that drives someone to "make something" be turned into an obsession with external content? Or perhaps (and I'm thinking out loud here) this has something specifically to do with the nature of online consumption. When you stare at a computer screen long enough, the separation between your own mind and the information and images being presented begins to blur. It becomes a fidgety form of meditation, replacing the focus needed to create. But the highs of creation are replaced by the highs of consumption. Gratification in the real world via rewarding work is replaced by the narcotic illusions of the screen world. This fits into some of my writing on Freeloading, in that it poses the question of whether the internet medium is necessarily more or less a catalyst for creation. Or maybe the kind of creation it encourages is less focused and more transient - not less "good" but certainly more shallow.

There have been some interesting recent developments and ideas posed relating to Freeloading, and I plan to add my two cents to these here...soonish. I ought not to make promises.

But besides all that hand-wringing, my real inspiration for getting back in the blog biz is to share the new video for "Thin Moon," by James Pants (Stones Throw).

The light appendages in the first 30 seconds really do it for me, as do the lyrics.

Uh-oh
I did it again
I made the moon go thin

The song is a highlight from Pants' album, Seven Seals. I bought that LP on a whim and, honestly, much of it borders on being unlistenable. But songs like "Thin Moon" and "The Eyes of The Lord" make up for the inconsistency.

I hope you enjoy the space flight, the ballerina, the Muppets and the James-faces raining down like cosmic dust.

Vampire Rain

2010-03-30T14:00:00.003-04:00

Something about the relentless deluge of another nor'easter inspires the hungover epiphany and resigned positivity of "Invisible Stairs" by Vampire Hands of Minneapolis. Their new song, "Shine On," (follow the link) is as nice on the ears of a psych-fan as kale in the mouth of a gratified urban foodie. The percussive break down in the middle of the song reminds me, ever so briefly, of Kenny Loggins. Luckily the guitar squall to follow buries my resurfacing memories of "Footloose."

Music Matters: A Step In The Right Direction

2010-03-25T11:21:00.007-04:00

I can imagine the shrill Torrent Freak headline already, "Music Matters A Front For Major Label Greed."

Judging from the obvious investment in the Music Matters site, it does seem funded by the sort of industry types whose financial interests are used by Freeloaders as an excuse to ignore their fair arguments, a stubborn attitude that stems from the days of Metallica v. Napster. This is part of the reason why my own arguments against Freeloading and in favor of paying for the music one loves and finds meaning in stem from the point of view of the conscientious consumer, the group who ultimately has the power and influence to shape the music industry going forward and stands to profit culturally, not financially.

I see how this Music Matters campaign might be brushed aside. Frankly, the considered appeal to the consumer's childhood memories (see video below) rubs me the wrong way and I imagine, from a marketing perspective, stems from a goal of tapping into the reader's distant memories of a simple world where paying for music was an accepted condition of reality, but that's just my persuasion industry gag reflex talking. On this point, Music Matters should detail who specifically is funding this if they hope to build any level of credibility with their target audience. I strongly agree with them, yet remain suspicious.

Regardless, this kind of campaign can go a long way towards what should be the key goal in regard to the issue and cultural crisis of Freeloading.

First, let me say what the key goals should not be - eliminating Freeloading completely, attempting to litigate or "control" it out of existence. I don't believe such strategies are possible, realistic or sustainable given the nature of technology or the nature of teenagers and college students who will find a way to Freeload material. And as we've all seen, litigation ends up hurting the creative industries, by destroying their image and clouding their valid arguments, more than they help. I don't think the internet can or should be "controlled," but that means consumers need to take responsibility for their actions and choices online in the context of the great freedom it offers. To be clear, I maintain that copyright holders have the right of respect online, and that may mean taking down sites in clear violation of the spirit of copyright. But like the war on terror, in the big picture this more a matter of winning hearts and minds and isolating extremists than it is an opportunity for "Shock and Awe."

The goal ought to be finding as many ways as possible to marginalize Freeloading. I've been working to make rational arguments and appeals to my fellow consumers and music fans, which some may feel are overly optimistic and ultimately doomed. From personal experience, I believe otherwise. But another crucial means of marginalizing Freeloading comes in the form of a simple idea like Music Matters, essentially a sticker that conveys simple information like, "This music is legal." It's a huge leap forward as an industry approach, however I would like to see this taken a step further, "stickers" that convey underlying transparency and fair deal structures, so that consumers know they're supporting labels who respect their artists and that the artists have a better chance of seeing the royalties someday. If enough consumers support such a thing via their purchases and said labels are able to grow and profit as a result, we could see the music industry at large be moved to adopt such standards of "ethics." As I've written before, this type of scenario seems to deliver on the internet's true promise of democracy, self-determination, and a flourishing culture of high creativity.

Synchronicity

2010-03-25T10:24:00.004-04:00

I've sung the praises of the NY Times' Tim Egan on these virtual pages before - his weekly online column is not to be missed. Today he investigates and bemoans the boiled-over anger infecting the Republican Party and apparently we've been thinking along the same lines.

It was the ancient Greeks who gave us a sense of what Republicans will be living with under this pact with rage. Many people are afraid of the dark, the saying goes. But the real tragedy is those who are afraid of the light.

One of Egan's most striking citations is a Quinnipiac poll which finds that only 13 percent of Americans describe themselves as aligned with the Tea Party.

Michael Steele ought to be very, very worried. November is a long time away. If the Democrats pass financial regulation, as appears likely, and the economy begins to rebound (mixed with more crazy Tea Party ferment, shocking independent voters) the Dems could very well hold on to both of their majorities and in the Republicans would be forced, in the political aftermath, to begin working with Obama. In this scenario, he may fulfill his promise of bipartisanship after all. Now that would be an accomplishment.

Morning Haze

2010-03-25T08:55:00.002-04:00

Attended a birthday party last night at Greenpoint's Pencil Factory and my subsequent morning haze is rendered beautifully in the above Desolation Wilderness video. The band, which released two solid albums on K Records, recently called it quits.

It's a shame.

Last year's LP by the band, New Universe, existed in same realm as Real Estate, but earned only a small fraction of that band's attention. Their textured, resonant slo-fi didn't sound terribly original at the time and was easily written off as yet another band that sounded like Galaxie 500, but on balance I think Desolation Wilderness received a raw deal both from impatient "bloggers" and the overall state of the music industry.

As the years drag on, I sense that whenever I play "Boardwalk Theme" for someone new, their eyes will suddenly perk up before asking, "What band is this?" The song, featured in the live video below, should have been indie rock's peculiar version of a hit - earning them a commercial licensing deal at least.

I don't know why they broke up - whether it was a case of money, lack of fan support or the members simply wanting to move on - but I know they had more great songs in them.

The haze has lifted. Now, back to that book proposal.

The Withering Underground

2010-03-24T08:35:00.005-04:00

In Jon Pareles' breakdown of SXSW in this week's NY Times, he observes the creeping effects of Freeloading taking a toll on the diversity of "underground" music. He writes:

But this year the music they were making didn’t sound so underground. It wasn’t so long ago that indie-rock — which dominates SXSW, despite representation of Americana, hip-hop, metal, free improvisation and more — prided itself on being slightly elusive, deep enough to reward a second and third listen and a look at lyrics. This year catchiness was king, with few misgivings about being too accessible. Bands weren’t counting on a second glance...
No one can take in more than a small fraction of the more than 2,000 bands on the schedule, and the move toward pop immediacy that I heard could be a sampling error. But it may also signal an adaptation, instinctive or strategic, to an increasingly impatient audience — one with gigabytes of music in a pocket, and countless other choices a click away online — and to a music market where recordings have diminished importance.
A song licensed for a soundtrack or a commercial, one way musicians still get paid for recordings, needs to register clearly and directly; the same goes for music heard live, as musicians’ careers tilt toward performing rather than sales of recordings. Lingering over music, both in the recording process and as a listener, may turn out to have been a luxury from the album era, now disappearing. And while pop simplicity can be a fine corrective to self-indulgence, it can also grow shallow.

As I discussed with the members of Future Of The Left, the reality of Corporate Patronage takes whatever anti-corporate or rebellious action a Freeloading consumer may believe they're taking part in and turns it on its head. Divorced from the financial backing of fans, artists and their labels must look elsewhere for support. So far, the most dependable and profitable "new model" comes in the form of licensing and branding, and an artist can't help but acknowledge this obvious truth. TFOL's Andy Falkous tackled this topic head on when I interviewed him.

"I'd be a fucking fool not to take the money that I could make from a commercial," he said, despite growing up hating such overt commerciality in music. "Piracy, or whatever you want to call it, forces artists into a more commercial understanding of their music, not less."

Yesterday on WNYC's Soundcheck, a related discussion was taking place about the level of branding in Lady Gaga's new video. Most listeners seemed against this sort of crass commercialism but acknowledged the same reality, that perhaps artists have no choice but to "sell out" in the age of Freeloading. As I've noted before, this is the tragic irony underlying the debate over free music and the wider future of free content (as the era of the iPad begins in just a few days). It's crucial for consumers to make the connection between the rise of Freeloading and the rise of Corporate Patronage and then do something about it - pay for the music they love and encourage peers to do the same, while calling out the Freeloading, "everything is going to be better...just wait a few more years" ideology as the baseless, doomed, wishful thinking that it is.

Are the Republicans Miscalculating?

2010-03-23T09:45:00.002-04:00

With a little over seven months to go before the mid-term elections, a lifetime in politics, the Republicans have bet on riding their anti-government inspired style of righteous indignation all the way to a congressional majority and this is tied to harnessing the energy of their new foaming-at-the-mouth base, the Tea Party. Many Republicans believe these folks will be hyper-motivated for the mid-terms and overwhelm a passive Democratic Party.

However, the Tea party already peaked as a widespread, influential movement some time ago and will split into two groups: conscientious and principled libertarians and the angry, emotional fringe. In the wake of the health care vote, the fringe will continue to receive press and remain the face of the Republican opposition until an election can prove them to be either useless of useful to Republicans.

Anger and aggression don't sell in American politics, yet that's what we saw from the Republicans last weekend. John Boehner, above, attempted to mirror and validate the anger of Tea Party members in his theatrical "Hell No" floor speech, so disingenuous that he appears close to chuckling in the midst of his howling. Outside the chamber, as has been well reported, Tea Party members shouted down minority members of congress with offensive epithets and mocked a man with Parkinson's Disease, shown in the video below. Republican members of Congress egged on protesters (only a few hundred) from the balcony of the Capitol, holding signs which read "Kill The Bill." During a non-synchronized moment, only one of the Congressmen held up his particular sign.

There he stood in a symbolic moment, looking out before the treasures of the National Mall, waving a sign that simply read, "Kill."

This is the short-term nihilism presented by the Republican leadership, so dangerous and pathetic. With their encouragement, apology and excuses for the Tea Party anger, they leave open a great vacuum within conservative discourse for this invective to permeate and build with little means of constructive expression or relief.

Rush Limbaugh said yesterday of "these bastards," the Democrats/liberals, "we need to take them out." My guess is, if and when some disturbed member of this already irritated caucus takes Limbaugh up on his imploring, the political party which takes such pride in its rhetoric of personal responsibility will take zero, and explain "these are isolated incidents" as both John Boehner and Michael Steele said of last weekend's ugly events.

The question is, how many citizens are actually this angry and will independent voters sweep in a message that is fundamentally negative? Either way, after this past weekend the Democrats have a new array of ugly examples, caught on tape, to which the Republicans can be linked come November. While I share in the concern and cynicism most citizens seem to hold for the future of this country, my cynicism only goes so far. The Democrats may not win any new seats this November, but the blind rage of the Tea Party will surely lose.

I hope.

Instinct

2010-03-10T18:48:00.000-05:00

Vile and Ruen, Down By The Water

2010-03-05T11:47:00.004-05:00

A Q&A I conducted with Kurt Vile is posted on The Tripwire today. I'm upset, frankly, that I managed to use "has been" twice in the first sentence when I could have easily written "is" the second time around. (Damn it!) Then again, what would life be without regrets?

Related: When does tranquility turn to boredom?

Hope this is read by a few people who haven't yet given Kurt a listen. Posted below you'll find a video of my favorite song by Mr. Vile, "Overnite Religion," off of Childish Prodigy. Do enjoy the delay.

Letters: "The Myth Of DIY" in Israel

2010-03-05T11:32:00.002-05:00

Received this note via my myspace account:

Hey Chris,

I'm an Israeli musician. I had my debut album out last year, and I'm the owner of a nice recording studio in Israel. I just read your article "The Myth of DIY" and was really moved by your writing, as a musician, as a professional engineer and producer and especially as an artist (of any kind).

It's not that I haven't read 1,000 economy oriented articles before about the changing music business. It's just that in reality, I see brilliant, brilliant artists practically going to waste, mainly because they can afford two days max of renting the studio. And as an artist and a "businessman", I often find myself ripped between trying to keep my studio alive and working, and the feeling that the song I'm recording at the moment has got to have (at least!) one more day of recording, even if they can't afford it...

Anyway, just wanted to let you know... I don't know...

Very nice songs btw,
bye@!

Gmail Driving Me Crazy: The Fresh And What-lys?

2010-03-04T13:08:00.005-05:00

Presenting a song I'd never heard by The Fresh And Onlys, posted today on "Pitchfork."

This band...

Their 2009 Woodsist LP, Grey-Eyed Girls, may have been my favorite rock record of the year. Grew on me and stayed there, whether I liked the psychedelic parasite or not. After dozens of listens, the album doesn't get old and (as in the case of 2008's You Can Have What You Want by Papercuts) was a criminally under-looked album-of-the-year contender. I was lucky enough to pick up their latest 7", Second One To Know, at Permanent Records a few weeks back. It is shockingly good. I continue to write this measly blog post despite being in a state of complete and utter shock. Watch yourselves. Also, an apparently new song, "The Garbage Collector," posted to their myspace is quite good.

Certifiable

2010-03-04T09:02:00.002-05:00

I've been on a serious Broadcast kick recently. As I work on the chapter outline for the Freeloading book, they keep me sane.

Thoughts For The Weekend: "Totalitarian Capitalism"

2010-02-26T18:35:00.003-05:00

A very disheartening, but remarkably clear-eyed assessment of the state of American journalism and culture today by Chris Hedges:

Journalists, like artists, are expected to provide their work free—this is the idea behind websites like The Huffington Post—and the only people who receive adequate compensation in our society are those skilled in the art of manipulation. Money flows to advertising rather than to art or journalism because manipulation is more highly valued than truth or beauty. Journalism, like culture, in America has become advertising.

2010-02-25T19:00:00.001-05:00

Corporate Patronage: Neon Indian

2010-02-25T17:04:00.004-05:00

In the future age of 2010, the hottest indie rock band in the country is brought to you by...Mountain Dew?

The nobles of yore who supported composers and artists here and there have morphed into our present day corporation. As I wrote about in the Freeloading article, the most likely model going forward for a music industry and artist unable to count on their fans actually purchasing recordings is a Corporate Patronage model. Ten or fifteen years ago a band or label willing to sign on for an advertisement or fly a commercial banner above their tour were seen as overly money hungry and some artists, it seemed, could afford some version of non-commercial "purity." But that's just 20th Century thinking.

The internet/digital revolution came with high hopes, that it would free creativity and lead to active, supportive communities. The highest ideals were ones of Cultural Democracy. Instead, consumers became greedy, major labels became fearful and a mutual distrust has endured. The result: desperation. Today all artists are shamelessly money hungry - they can't afford not to be. If the current trends continue, music will be increasingly mediated via corporate sponsorship - not an inherently bad thing - but something diametrically opposed to the supposed ideals of the proud Freeloader and the promise of the internet itself. Doesn't this seem tragic, or is it just me?

2010-02-23T11:11:00.000-05:00

The Great Paralysis

2010-02-23T08:36:00.003-05:00

In todays Times, Roger Cohen takes aim at our nation's move from an Oedipal society to a Narcissistic one, by way of his recent time in jury duty and examining the Tea Party movement and health care.

Community — a stable job, shared national experience, extended family, labor unions — has vanished or eroded. In its place have come a frenzied individualism, solipsistic screen-gazing, the disembodied pleasures of social networking and the à-la-carte life as defined by 600 TV channels and a gazillion blogs. Feelings of anxiety and inadequacy grow in the lonely chamber of self-absorption and projection.

He concludes that the right thing for us to do as a community of Americans is to adopt the Public Option. I agree with him, but I'm afraid the cultural blockages in our discourse are more complex than he chooses to acknowledge in this piece. Technology is pushing our Narcissism, but the failure of our media institutions (and the government's regulation of them) is primarily responsible for our sorry state of communication in America. Similar to the sides of the Freeloading debate I've been writing about, the political sides in the America talk past one another - or scream and mock to each other's faces when cameras are around. The human brain responds to the titillation of conflict before appeals to reason and understanding can find solid footing, and we see this every day in the news-entertainment complex. Gazing from a distance at the apparent mess that is our political system and news industry, I keep thinking this country needs more of the experimentation our Founding Fathers demonstrated, in the form of a few new institutions. But what those institutions would look like - I don't know. In the meantime, our system buckles in the face of myriad challenges, expressions of the end of our hegemonic cycle and crumbling infrastructure. The influence of money trumps maturity and good sense. If we can take Cohen's experience in the Jury room as an example and create media institutions that attract diverse groups of Americans and encourage them to communicate respectfully, that would be a huge step - but how?

Bobby Conn - "You're Never Gonna Get Ahead"

2010-02-17T10:03:00.001-05:00

GPCH: After The Close It's The After Party

2010-02-16T10:02:00.013-05:00

The Greenpoint Coffee House officially closed on Monday, February 8th. The following Friday, the front of house staff hosted a party for customers and staff, past and present. Was a "perfect," celebratory, spirited night for memories to be rehashed. In the empty, candle lit space the attendees could understand - "this is over." When fellow staffers Jake Margolin, Nicky Cirillo and I showed up in the afternoon the place was a wreck and literally smelled like manure (from the disassembled walk-in refrigerator). If working at the Coffee House taught us anything, it was how to deal with a lot of "shit" in the (mostly) warm company of others, and we had the GPCH looking and smelling beautiful in under an hour. Thank you, Pine Sol. Carly Mostar, mother of the "Welcome To Greenpoint" sign, joined us later to add her artistic flare. She brought balloons, the popping of which terrorized my easily startled soul throughout the evening.

All good things (and bad things) must come to an end. For all its faults and flaws, it was an honor to be associated with a real place like the GPCH. May it rest in peace.

The Coffee House is dead. Long live the Coffee House.

Video Daze: Eluvium + Fresh And Onlys + Desolation Wilderness

2010-02-13T15:43:00.003-05:00

Enjoy.

Greenpoint Coffee House: The Final Day

2010-02-09T12:13:00.004-05:00

Freeloading Elephants Find Their Clearing

2010-02-09T12:04:00.002-05:00

Nice post on Freeloading by Rob Hunt at Elephant Rock.

Greenpoint Coffee House: The Final Sunday

2010-02-09T11:28:00.007-05:00

Loft Parties on Green Street

2010-02-08T21:54:00.004-05:00

The Steel Phantoms played designer Mary Meyer's loft party in Greenpoint last weekend.

Laser lights impressed.

The Steel Phantoms simultaneously combine tendencies of The Zombies and Rush - and I mean that in a good way. (A-Ron!)

GPCH RIP

2010-02-06T22:04:00.001-05:00

2010-02-04T21:47:00.000-05:00

Freeloading in the Chicago Reader

2010-01-28T21:54:00.005-05:00

Miles Raymer of the Chicago Reader has written a great piece summarizing his own take on Freeloading and uses "Fuck Love..." as a reference point. But I have one qualm when he writes:

Ruen still hopes "freeloaders" can be convinced to change their ways. He thinks it will help to remind file sharers who traffic in independent music that it comes from labels that most of them claim, in other contexts, to want to support. Ruen proposes that independent record labels borrow some tactics from companies that sell fair-trade coffee—he's betting that many file sharers have ethical qualms and can be lured away from BitTorrent by a guarantee that their money is going to a label that does its business in a transparent, artist-friendly fashion.
But curtailing file sharing is probably like trying to repack Pandora's box. It's one thing to get someone to pay a 20-cent premium to feel slightly better about the coffee they were going to buy anyway; it's another entirely to get them to pay for a cup when there's a place next door giving it away. How much guilt does someone have to feel in order to forswear the nearly limitless amount of high-quality music freely available online?

Of course Miles is correct that coffee and digital music aren't quite the same thing. But the concept of Fair Trade certainly applies. This is about seeking fairness, not inflicting "guilt." It's about being aware of your place as an engaged member of society and participant in a supportive, vibrant, original culture. The great majority of people understand that the "free culture" ideology just doesn't add up, and I don't believe it's at all inconceivable that former Freeloaders can augment their consumption behavior. I've seen it happen. As hopeless as I feel about other issues, I'm more and more hopeful about this one.

What's missing is a lower cost option ($7 or $8) for digital albums where, after distribution costs, the label and artist are getting as close to a 50-50 split as possible. Such a model would neutralize many of Freeloading's misguided arguments and serve the ultimate goals of marginalizing that practice while helping music culture to flourish in democratic, sustainable and meaningful ways that make good on the internet's great promise. I'll be interviewing different members of the music industry in the coming weeks to see whether such a model is actually workable. This will also serve as research for (I hope) a future book on the subject.

Thanks again to Miles and the editors at the Reader.

Go Brewers.

The iPad Opens The Door

2010-01-28T21:11:00.003-05:00

Was happy to find this nuanced and thoughtful column by Timothy Egan published yesterday on NYTimes.com. Over the past year, Egan's columns have been personal favorites. In this piece, "iCountry News," he outlines the potential for either salvation or final destruction the iPad offers to Old Media. He's echoing the same arguments I've been making in regard to Freeloading, the dangers of blindly following where technology leads without stepping back to consider what kind of a new and, perhaps, undesirable world it may be offering. The rise of Freeloading in publishing - he cites 9 million illegal book downloads in the waning months of 2009 - underlines the importance of the issue and coming to some consensus on how we want to collectively treat creators, content and compensation going forward. Get ready to hear all the old arguments of music Freeloading translated to book publishing:

That’s 9 million books pirated. Where would the brilliant Robert Caro be — certainly not with enough of an advance to sustain a 30-years-and-counting, multiple-volume opus on Lyndon Johnson — if publishing were left to the whims of the electronic market? So goes the argument.

Dear Freeloader - Letter #7

2010-01-27T16:50:00.004-05:00

Chris, I'm not one to send letters of praise (or derision) after reading an article, but I just had to compliment you on your piece on "freeloading". This is BY FAR the most well written, well informed, and reasoned discussion I've read on this complex issue. I find it striking how extremely intelligent, reasonable people who LOVE music will rationalize

the theft of music and intellectual property. In your article I thought I finally found the piece that would guilt a friend into changing his mind on this subject. While I thought it would be simply impossible for him to defend freeloading after reading the piece, his response (via twitter, unfortunately) was, "the best art is created without commercial incentive. It is created by poor kids in their parents' basements. I'll buy their shirt" Then, "the major label is the real freeloader. P2P needs to end the label paradigm." While I understand the base of some of his arguments, I'm still bewildered with his defense of freeloading. Anyway, sorry to ramble, I just wanted to thank you for the wonderful article. As someone who has built considerable debt through the purchase of any and every album that strikes my fancy, freeloading is something that gets my dander up! What could be better than supporting a talented artist, allowing them to pursue their art to its highest level? My friend who went on about the best art being created in a basement is a HUGE Radiohead fan, by the way...WHAT???!

Thanks!

The argument that the label “paradigm” is somehow illegitimate is a common refuge for the self-righteous faction of Freeloaders. Rather than try to guilt your friend into anything, you could try a more reasoned approach. Ask him who he thinks will market and promote artists if labels no longer exist. If labels are so obviously antiquated and unnecessary, he should also be able to identify a handful of artists who are having reasonably successful careers on their own and without label support. If he can’t find any strong examples, maybe he’ll begin to rethink his stance. Not all labels are equally shady - he ought to throw his support behind the ones he feels more comfortable with. All that said, I think the most positive outcome of this discourse would be achieving better royalty terms for artists, and encouraging labels to be more transparent about how much artists are actually getting.

Dear Freeloader - Letter #6

2010-01-27T16:27:00.002-05:00

Thanks for your article on music downloading, whatever name you give it. I agree with a lot of the points that you’ve made, and I have some ambivalence toward others. I feel as though I straddle the divide somewhat between those that you view as making righteous decisions regarding the support of artists, labels, and record stores through the purchase of music, and those who unlawfully suck up hours and hours of songs on the internet without paying for it. I am sure that I download more music than, say, most of my friends, I also buy more records than most of them. I am not suggesting that by buying a record this entitles me to three free ones, certainly it does not, but I do feel that by supporting artists, labels, and shops, I sleep a little easier at night, though this does little to assuage my thirst for more and more music. It works the other way, too. I have, countless times, downloaded something more or less indiscriminately, listened, fell in love with it, and gone on to buy the record. There is another point here, and that is the distinction between a record as a physical object and the songs contained in that record as a group of files that can’t be held in the hand. Sure I’ve got days of songs on my computer that came over the wires and only exist as MP3s, but I’m far too much of a fetishist to be satisfied with only that way of experiencing music. I love records. I love the ritual of playing them, I love the artwork, the liner notes and inserts, the singularity of that particular piece of vinyl, and for that matter CDs, though less distinctive and more dispensable, there is a house for that music to live in and I will usually come out of listening to an album with more of an impact if I have something more than track names on my iTunes to reference to the sound coming through the speakers.

This is a different argument, I guess, but it seems related. Growing up in a succession of redneck towns as I did with very little easy access to all of the fantastic music I was certain existed somewhere out there forced me to look harder, appreciate more fully, and in many cases spend more money than those fortunate enough to live down the street from a great record store. During my fledgling time on the fledgling internet, I was able to find resources on this magical music, but in those days it meant reading a lot of hyperbole and appraising thumbnails of album art before going to the one record store in town and cross-referencing titles in their phonebook-style catalogue and ordering $20 UK import Cds, sound unheard.

Much has changed since then. I am glad of having had to struggle to find those formative experiences, it seems a mixed blessing for kids who have unlimited access to anything under the sun. Listening obsessively to tapes I had squirreled away money for a week in order to buy has left a more indelible impression than finding a torrent on my computer I had forgotten was there, even if in retrospect the tape was awful.

As I type this, I’m listening to a record, a record I bought from an independent record store, but as is often the case, I bought it used, so in a sense I am supporting the retailer, but not the artist or the label.

The county library where I live is one of the best in the country and a sizable chunk of the music I own digitally came from CDs I checked out for free, on the one hand, and from a library funded through the taxes I pay, on the other.

These would serve as pretty dubious arguments on the inconsistency of persecuting those that “share files,” certainly it wouldn’t hold up in court, these are just things I think of when the arguments over piracy are de-saturated to grayscale.

This is all pretty unfocused, so thanks for your patience sifting through it. Finally, I feel like it is relevant to say that although I can’t call myself a musician, I am an artist and a writer, and one who is rarely paid for the things I make. I send books that I’ve made or pieces of writing out unsolicited and rarely hear word back. I have always paid postage and printing through the sort of numbing retail work most all of us have had to endure here and there. As an artist, I would like to be acknowledged for the things that I make, and maybe even be paid once in a while. By that same token, I want to support other artists, particularly the ones that depend on the sale of that record to keep them from having to work in a kitchen or a record store selling someone else’s music. I would rather that the musicians I like be making more music for me to hear.

But no matter how much money I spend I will never be able to find all those magical unheard albums out there, certainly I couldn’t find them all in torrents either, but I feel like certain concessions need to be made for the bottomless availability of music and a curiosity to match it.

Thanks for your time.

The aesthetic argument you outline above is certainly related to the greater Freeloading argument/discourse. One of the most interesting facets of this issue is the shift in our understanding of commodities. When music commodities were all physical, no one needed to wrestle with these issues of whom deserved payment or compensation. If you wanted something, you bought it. If you didn’t want it, you didn’t buy it. There was no need to intellectualize notions of support or the sustainability of art. But I’m hardly sentimental for those days, when big labels wielded their power over radio and television and fans had relatively little influence. With the internet and its openness, we’ve been handed greater power. Our choices matter more now and require more consideration. We see the results of this power in the dramatic decline of the music industry. Perhaps the major labels have gotten some of their just desserts, after years of aggressively market and profit-driven practices, at the expense of supporting challenging and exciting artists. But that’s not an argument to not pay for anything. Now it’s up to us to support these artists. We have a chance to build up the Secretly Canadians of the world and support a new middle-class of artists. But all of this requires an intellectualized understanding of commodities, one in which you aren’t always holding a product in your hand at the end of the sale.

Thanks for sharing your history as a music consumer - sounds pretty amazing. I love your mention of ordering albums, “sound unheard.” One of my greatest pleasures as a music fan remains reading or hearing about an album, and buying it without having heard anything. As you say, sometimes the music isn’t amazing, but that experience as a music listener strikes me as pure, somehow. And as I mentioned in the articles, this type of listening circumstance will force you to give an album that third or fourth chance. So much of this goes back to investment. The more time and energy you put in to something, the more you get out of it. And of course I fear that music listeners raised on unlimited, infinite abundance are spreading themselves too thin. The sentiment that “there’s so much music out there, and I need to find it” makes me nervous in this new age. With torrents, its easier to fool yourself into thinking that you can actually find everything. Of course, that’s impossible. Especially from a time standpoint. What’s the point of discovering Marquee Moon if you listen to it just once before moving on to the entire Lee “Scratch” Perry catalogue? I don’t use torrents at all, and I admit that I sometimes feel like I might be missing out, trusting my record store experience and my limited funds. But I remind myself - you can’t have it all. That calms my tendency to buy seven albums, all of which I trick myself into “needing,” or giving in and Freeloading all 50 of Pitchfork’s top albums of the year from torrents. On the other hand, new artists have so much more exposure than in the past, if they can break through the digital din. And that’s fantastic. It’s also important to keep in mind all the options for sampling music legally.

The ideal, I think, is to promote deals with better terms for artists (say, closer to 50-50 for the label and artist once the label recoups expenses) and to find an online distributor who is willing to take a bit less money than iTunes. Mixed with savvy marketing and a good faith, “collective” mentality from a few indie labels, I think the internet could actually deliver on its promise of democracy, transparency, efficiency, justice...you name it. But it all starts with accepting that artists need our monetary support and that the commodity system is the most efficient (and realistic) means of manifesting that support.

Zappa on Label Suits and Rubber Goods

2010-01-26T12:01:00.001-05:00

Great Things

2010-01-12T00:39:00.001-05:00

A fantastic discussion is going on at Lemming Trail. Spy on it here.

Dear Freeloader - Letter #5

2010-01-11T23:53:00.004-05:00

Chris:

Just read the augmented reprise of your insightful "fuck love, let's make dystopia" piece, and it would be great if your perspective could be cloned 20 trillion times, melted down to ectoplasmic infiltration spores, and spread throughout the globe. As a musician who began his career in the days of no Internet and cassettes as calling card, I've lived through and participated in all of the socio-cultural phases of distribution-promotion-marketing-DIY that have brought us to the present day.

When the whole Napster thing started, I was intrigued, and I used it as a tool to seek out the out-of-print, avant "lost classics" that I'd always coveted. In those cases where I found things that were still available, and I liked them, I bought them. Admittedly, if I couldn’t find it in the “real world” I kept it, and I have a drawer full of dusty zip discs to show for this. Of course, my demographic diverges from that of the typical "freeloader" as you so aptly put it. I'm a collector and have been since I was a teenager; I want the object, the mass of a CD or vinyl, the packaging; a dinky MP3 means nothing to me, doesn't excite me, doesn't feel like I'm psychically linked to the work. I never download now (I used to seek out the strange and unavailable on blogs and got one too many viruses for my sins), I use services like Rhapsody (decidedly lacking) to check shit out. Once again, if I like it, I buy it.

One of the fundamental issues here is who "listens” and who doesn't. To me, the true listener, the person who requires music in their lives as an escape valve from tedium, as an inspirational catalyst, as a form of knowledge importation, who LOVES it, will never be a freeloader. To me, the freeloader is someone who, in the past and pre-internet, may have had some interchangeable CDs in their car and that would be it; music is a lifestyle accessory to these people, not an essential soul feeder.

In respect to my own music making, I've operated in the red as a musician and to express myself for years now. After a time of punk-rock fueled dissolution and absurd rock star pursuits, I came to the realization that if I wanted to make the kind of music I wanted to make and survive, I would have to abandon dreams of supporting myself from it. But, I could never abandon the art itself. So, for the past 20 years or so, I've had quasi-white collar day-jobs that have allowed me to make the kinds of music I’ve wanted to make without needing the money from it. I'm an artist, and why should I give up being an artist just because the chances of "making it" or living off of it are slim to none? Fuck that. So, the entire freeloading issue is a source of complicated ambivalence for me, and one which I could go even more into depth on than this forum will tolerate. I will say that occasionally I feel as if the current state-of-affairs has brainwashed me; I'm so used to paying for making and archiving my work that simple reimbursement is never a consideration. I even feel ambivalent about using the word "art," a moniker which my work certainly deserves.

I've adopted new paradigms in reaction to this, such as limited edition releases, to lessen the sting. I’m also lucky enough to have my solo work (Lid Emba) sponsored by a small, independent Atlanta label so I'm not just floating around with no anchor in the maximum meta-sea out there.

We live in an age of entitlement, maximum saturation, and laziness. In a word, decline. I produce despite all that because I have no other choice.

Thanks.

Love the image of a drawer full of dusty zip discs...I feel old.

I completely share your utter lack of excitement with MP3s. Nowhere near as much fun (or as meaningful, in my experience) as casting your lot with the inconvenient-but-rewarding physical object.

Perhaps you’re right, that the key distinction for Freeloading is whether one truly “listens” to and appreciates music itself. This reminds me of the dominant discussions of “value” as it pertains to the decline of music. Apologists for Freeloading, those who accept every destructive forces of the internet as nothing but a natural evolution which must be adapted to rather than harnessed for our own reasonable purposes, believe that Freeloaders won’t pay for albums only because music doesn’t have enough “value.” Their solution is to enhance the CD, add a DVD, include a t-shirt with a purchase, etc. Why would someone buy music, they argue, when they can instead choose the exponential value presented in something like a video game?

As a music lover, I find that line of reasoning corrupt. The value of music, far greater than any video game, is the music itself. It’s up to the listener to appreciate it and, as you say, to “listen.” That act of appreciation is infectious and enriches one’s own life, adds meaning to their existence and underlines real human experience. What could be more valuable?

I do think the internet is a valuable tool for discovering new music and emerging artists through streaming sites and internet radio. I don’t think someone who Freeloads a few albums is destroying the world, though it’s vital for them to consider and understand the implications of their actions. What’s really troubling to me, and to you as well, is someone on the hyper-consumerist streak who has 20,000 songs on their iPod, most of them Freeloaded. Just when will all this music be listened to? It’s a different form of collection. Unlimited by the constraints of scarcity. And it can become an addictive behavior, much more about quantity than quality.

I don’t think you’re the only one who feels “brainwashed” by the status quo. That’s another reason why I’ve written these articles - most people feel isolated in their uneasiness with the status quo and assume they’re wrong or in the minority or hopelessly on the wrong side of technology so they accept the “reality” of Freeloading. Thus, we end up brainwashed, inflicted by Group Think, accepting the pessimistic and passive attitudes of Freeloading. That’s partly what I mean when I say “microchip spirituality” - that we subtly accept the internet “truth” as the ultimate arbiter of value and meaning. I'm certainly not against technology, but in a world where digital communication is advancing faster than we can hope to understand its implications, shouldn't we strive for balance?

I sadly agree with your account of decline, though I'm determined to retain hope for the future. Taken as an example of a broad unfolding phenomenon, that’s why I think this issue is so important - an importance I only gleaned after “The Myth Of DIY” was published. The philosophical implications run deep. Another thing I learned after "Myth Of DIY" was that people are perfectly capable of changing their minds. If this dialogue can continue sans name-calling, I don't see any reason why a common sense approach can't be reached.

I know. That's a big "if."

Similarities: Washed Out and Sting

2010-01-08T00:24:00.002-05:00

Dear Freeloader - Letter #4

2010-01-07T23:17:00.003-05:00

People want to, or at least claim they want to, pay artists for music.

People don't want to pay record execs who exploit artists for music.

Around the internets, this is the claim people continue to make.

Par example:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Music/comments/aeo5d/im_the_first_to_admit_it_i_pirate_music_like_a/

Cheers

Thanks for this. Yeah, I know it’s a very common notion and a misapplied, if understandable, one.

If an artist chooses to sign with a label (one that happens to have an “Executive” on staff), are they truly being exploited? On a basic level, don’t they want to be on that label? Ultimately I want to show my support for an artist who is making interesting/“good” music and encourage the label to better compensate the artist in the future and sign more “good” artists like them. That’s my general thinking. I also hope there’s room to pressure labels into offering better terms to artists - and publicizing said terms so consumers/fans can purchase music with a little less anger and skepticism.

Especially at this time, the exploitation argument falls flat. Artists have more opportunity than ever to go it alone, or avoid the supposed exploitation of labels. From what I can see, they’re still signing. If you know of any glaring counter examples I’d love to hear about them. That’s one of the frustrating things about this argument, everyone keeps maintaining this radically new model is just over the horizon, but artists keep casting their lot with a very traditional model. The way they expose and promote themselves to get the record deal has changed - but they still go for the deal and I'm very curious about that decision making process given all the possibility that technology offers.

Dear Freeloader - Letter #3

2010-01-06T23:01:00.003-05:00

Ahhh. Thank you for that.

That was a really really terrific article, as was your original one.

I'm a teenager - apparently a member of a hopelessly self-entitled and over-privileged generation - whose sole income comes from working in an ice cream shop twice a week. Beyond that I don't have any honest justification for the amount of music I download (or 'freeload', as you call it). I'm really conflicted about it - like, I know I should be a vegetarian, but meat tastes SO FUCKING GOOD. Those hundreds of dollars I've handed over to independent stores and labels and bands this year doesn't mean much after I senselessly download 30 albums in one day. I try, I do try to buy! But it's almost always out of guilt. Vinyl sounds better, but it ends up sitting on my shelf while I listen to it on my iPod.

There's very little incentive to spend money on music beyond guilt or object fetishism. Both work on me, but I think artists ought to capitalize more on the latter. Like Of Montreal's Skeletal Lamping multimedia packaging extravaganza, or the intricately illustrated spinny wheel on the cover of Menomena's Friend or Foe. Even the cheap cutout fold-up paper tent thing that came with Bromst. Or even the essays accompanying various compilations or Sufjan Stevens symphonic road tributes. Can you think of other recent examples? They're convincing enough for me, and maybe even for someone who hasn't given the issue any thought.

In regards to your hate mail - what sort of person actually takes time out of their day to email someone who disagrees with them unless it actually affected them in some way? I'd say that's a positive reaction. If it gets under their skin, your argument may eventually dissolve into their, uh, blood stream and into their.. wallets?

Anyway. Sorry if this is riddled with errors and/or long-winded, I'm a bit drunk right now (was just out Supporting Local Music! yeah!). My point is: that was great, thank you, the end.

Hey. Great letter.

Object fetishism, for sure, is part of the reason to buy physical copies of music. Absolutely. But I don’t see why guilt has to so control your buying experience. Do you think it’s possible to shift away from the negative of guilt to a more positive feeling of, “I’m investing in this store, this label, this artist, and my relationship to all of the above?” Seriously, let me know if you think that’s possible because that switch in attitude is vital to getting Freeloaders of all ages more excited about compensating artists and labels for their work.

It sounds like you buy a fair amount of your music, by the way. I think that’s great, of course. But your habit of buying vinyl, then listening to your iPod anyway, sounds like a frustrating experience. If that’s the case, why not just buy the album on iTunes? It’s so much cheaper that way and if you aren’t keying-in to the listening experience of vinyl after effort on your part, then why bother? On the other hand, you may find your appreciation of vinyl grows as you get older (but be prepared...moving it is a serious pain). In a couple of years you may be very happy to have built your record collection, even if you aren’t getting much use from it now.

Up On It - Daily Swarm

2010-01-05T12:46:00.001-05:00

Thanks to the Daily Swarm for posting my Freeloading article today.

Dear Freeloader - Letter #2

2010-01-05T12:18:00.003-05:00

Hey Chris,

I'm not sure if you remember my letter but this is the music writer who grew up from Brooklyn. I responded to your first DIY article and recently found your blog containing the follow-up on tinymixtapes. I hope this is an appropriate means of reaching you since you included it in your blog post.

What's striking is that this year live music finally surpassed recorded music in revenue for the first time in many years.

Labels, major or otherwise, will always have an edge in that they are the gatekeepers to high quality material. From concerts to vinyls and CDs their product will always trump anything that can be obtained on bittorrent. The problem, from tickets to records, as always is price control. And with a generation raised on Itunes free bittorrents are a reasonable alternative for younger listeners to quality materials. Its not the same as getting a bootleg DVD on the street. Enough people think its acceptable enough based on their own experience with music so they'll go with free.

With that mind set at the forefront, music in this country has always operated on a hyper capitalism model with virtually no oversight (LiveNation merging with Ticketmaster this year is the most dramatic example). You even say in your article that money is a means of voting to keep an artist in business. But money is also a broad arbiter. Niche performers never get enough to sustain more than a meager and temporary existence. In indie rock for example, you are expected to have a break out record that will attract a buyers coalition large enough to sustain your momentum. Wilco is a great example of this. They've culled a fanbase of jam band enthusiasts, indie rock followers, NPR devotees, folk fans, country fans, yuppies, noise/experimentation enthusiasts and many others. Had the band kept a select following with polarizing music they'd be living hand to mouth. But because they are considered indispensable to so many groups they must continue on and the money pours in.

So when we vote with money, aren't we also asking for broader appeal and, possible, a more watered down product in certain instances. Not all mind you, but sometimes the big record doesn't make it and

In other countries when the government gives out significant funds to the arts at more then the top grant-worthy levels, mid-level institutions thrive from their involvement as well. Moreover, sharing something because more palatable because, like the Smithsonian, people will have already paid for the music in tax dollars. So it won't truly be for free and that eliminates the free-rider impulse.

Outside of that ideal situation of massive funding for diverse genres what about the here and now ? While the internet provides a mechanism of piracy it also provides for a sense of intimacy. Amanda Palmer recently got her fans to pay for certain aspects of her tour through donations (lodging, food, etc.). That's incredible. They feel close to her not only because of her music but because her availability to fans and gift incentives she's provided with records. John Darnielle posts on his forums and gives out free music on occasion. Anni Rossi is giving out a free EP for people who sign up for her updates. Being accessible pays off and it doesn't require a one sided investment. They've invested more time into making me a fan and I've responded in kind. Its not voting with money if the relationship feels more reciprocal.

So in other words, killing everyone with kindness has worked and the Internet has played a role in that. Its an old system. Just as I mentioned about the 80' underground in my last letter: when you have a connection with the audience via college radio, gigs, fan clubs, and record stores you will have a customer. I'm less likely to steal from you the performer if I know you and what you've done for me. So on the upside I get the quality product you've made with your label and I've helped out a person I've felt invested in. That personal investment makes the free low quality alternative much more hollow.

That ran long I apologize. Keep up the good work.

Hey,

Thanks so much for both of your letters. I meant to respond to your first one - sorry about that.

The shift in revenues from recordings to touring is striking. Of course, it’s intrinsically tied to the precipitous drop in record sales mixed with the rise in touring revenues. Still looks like a significant net loss for the industry.

I appreciate your point about voting with money, and whether it necessarily leads an artist down the path of more watered-down music. In practice, yes, this is sometimes what happens, but I don’t believe we’re voting for such an outcome with the purchase of a more “potent” release. If you buy the potent release, you’re voting for that release and you’re telling the artist, “Keep doing what you’re doing,” and telling the label, “Keep signing artists like ‘so-and-so.’” If you see a compromised vision from the artist and you don’t approve, then don’t buy that album. There’s the no vote. They’ve lost a fan.

I share your hopes for patronage at a government level, as Canada has been more willing to provide, but I just don’t think it’s a realistic prospect. Has anyone been proposing this in Washington? Russ Feingold, actually, might be interested in pushing for such a thing. BUT our country is in debt, unemployed and fighting a war in a country nicknamed “The Graveyard Of Empires.” When can we expect politicians to see music diversity as some kind of emergency? That’s why I’m pushing for patronage - by fans.

Many people argue that in the wake of the “free” mentality, artists need to buck/give up and find ways of making money “around” the content. But this leads us down a road of artists making money for nearly everything but their actual art - the thing we ultimately want more of - at the expense of the time and energy they have to devote themselves to that particular art. This strikes me as a backwards model, or at least counterintuitive from a fan’s perspective. You can never really get close to the musician anyhow, that isn’t what being a fan is about. It’s about getting close to the music and mythology behind it.

As far as the personal investment making Freeloading feel more hollow - I hope you’re right. Honestly I think most people just don’t consider the ethics or the consequences of their choices, what it might mean for the future of music in general.

Spread Love, It's the Brooklyn Way

2010-01-05T12:17:00.000-05:00

Mos Def - New Music - More Music Videos

I need to buy this record.

Dear Freeloader - Letter #1

2010-01-04T22:52:00.002-05:00

Uh, forgot to thank you the first time for the article. I'm a 30-year-old dude that teaches full-time in order to support my other full-time job as a musician/label owner. Since I found a career that I love and want to do for the rest of my life, I haven't stressed about making a profit from performing or releasing music, but I do hope to come close to breaking even someday. I'm often frustrated by music journalism, because until I read your article, I hadn't come across one piece of music "biz" writing that treated small-scale music-makers like myself with any respect.

There's a lot more I could say, but you obviously already understand. Please keep on spreading the good word - most people under 26 (or so) have no idea about the economics behind music making, and no other writers seem to care.

Thanks for your letter. Your situation sounds rather ideal - a day job you’re content with that allows for your artistic pursuits. I share your frustration with music journalism and its treatment of the subject. It’s hard to now why, exactly, no one has made much of a fuss about Freeloading. One answer might be that no one really knows what’s right and what’s wrong - yet - and are afraid of casting their lot with one side or another. How can we absorb so much change to our habits and thoughts concerning music and still step back to evaluate the bigger picture? Not an easy thing to do.

The more cynical/angry side of me believes that the imbalanced discourse has more to do with fear of upsetting “the internet.” No music journalist really wants to be arguing against technology or the “new thing.” They don’t want to upset their audience or seem out of touch. Journalism concerns itself with trends and what’s fresh/different/new - so I suppose it isn’t surprising that so much Group Think has emerged on the subject. Ultimately, I don’t think there’s been much of an opening to discuss all the ground level issues at play here. We need honest voices and open ears if we are to get anywhere.

Australian Commodity Trade

2010-01-04T22:24:00.002-05:00

I did a poor job of responding to letters when "The Myth Of DIY" came out. This time around, I'll be responding to each letter and posting my response above. Let's call the series, "Dear Freeloader."

I haven't found too many mentions of "Fuck Love..." on other sites, but the Chicago Reader liked it and I found another mention on this Australian commodity trade Blog - a surprise to be sure.

Letters: "re: Fuck Love Let's Make Dystopia"

2009-12-28T18:52:00.003-05:00

Thanks for your time.

Letters: "A Sad Nonfiction"

2009-12-28T18:38:00.004-05:00

Chris:

We live in an age of entitlement, maximum saturation, and laziness. In a word, decline. I produce despite all that because I have no other choice.

Thanks.

Letters: "pirating"

2009-12-28T18:29:00.002-05:00

People want to, or at least claim they want to, pay artists for music.

People don't want to pay record execs who exploit artists for music.

Around the internets, this is the claim people continue to make.

Par example:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Music/comments/aeo5d/im_the_first_to_admit_it_i_pirate_music_like_a/

Cheers

Party Tonight

2009-12-21T17:07:00.003-05:00

Spinning records tonight at Bruar Falls. About to unleash some very limited edition Andy Williams and Burl Ives 1st pressings (never opened).

Letters: "Microchip Spirituality"

2009-12-20T23:33:00.000-05:00

Ahhh. Thank you for that.

That was a really really terrific article, as was your original one.

I'm a teenager - apparently a member of a hopelessly self-entitled and over-privileged generation - whose sole income comes from working in an icecream shop twice a week. Beyond that I don't have any honest justification for the amount of music I download (or 'freeload', as you call it). I'm really conflicted about it - like, I know I should be a vegetarian, but meat tastes SO FUCKING GOOD. Those hundreds of dollars I've handed over to independent stores and labels and bands this year doesn't mean much after I senselessly download 30 albums in one day. I try, I do try to buy! But it's almost always out of guilt. Vinyl sounds better, but it ends up sitting on my shelf while I listen to it on my iPod.

Anyway. Sorry if this is riddled with errors and/or long-winded, I'm a bit drunk right now (was just out Supporting Local Music! yeah!). My point is: that was great, thank you, the end.

Letters: "DIY, Piracy, and Freeloading"

2009-12-20T23:27:00.001-05:00

Hey Chris,

What's striking is that this year live music finally surpassed recorded music in revenue for the first time in many years.

That ran long I apologize. Keep up the good work.

Letters: "Freeloading, DIY, etc."

2009-12-18T08:39:00.001-05:00

someday. I'm often frustrated by music journalism, because until I read your article, I hadn't come across one piece of music "biz" writing that treated small-scale music-makers like myself with any respect.

An Addendum to "Fuck Love, Let's Make Dystopia" (Tiny Mix Tapes)

2009-12-16T16:30:00.005-05:00

Today I begin another foray into the grand debate of illegal downloading.

In the process of some last minute editing, I failed to make the distinction that the Corporate Patronage model I speak of towards the end of the article is seen most clearly in the licensing of music for advertising campaigns and corporate sponsorship for tours and album releases, etc. I can see how my conclusion might not add up for some readers, may even seem a bit paranoid, without the mention of licensing and sponsorship. I regret this.

As with "The Myth Of DIY," I don't expect anyone to agree with each and every facet of my argument. This piece is much longer, less focused and more fragmented than the article which spawned it. "Fuck Love..." has given me a chance to unpack many of the ideas I've wrestled with since last summer, and I thank readers for humoring me. I'm excited to receive any feedback, positive or negative and will post any received letters on this blog (chrisruen@gmail.com). Comments can also be left below. Unless I find my arguments being grossly misrepresented, I'll try staying further away from the debate this time around.

Many readers misunderstood elements of the first article, namely that I somehow hold the belief that all artists deserve to be paid for their work. Not true. Rather, I'm arguing for meritocracy. That the artists whose work is meaningful to individual consumers and fans deserve/need compensation and support for their work via some version of the commodity system. This accepted and embraced system, mixed with the democratic possibilities of the internet, looks like an attractive means to ensure that the "best" artists prosper at the hands (and wallets) of their audience while more marginal ones likely fade away. No system is perfect, I know. The commodity system simply appears preferable (and much more realistic) when weighed against the other models I mention in the piece. And it's certainly preferable to the repeated, deterministic notion that though we have no clue what the "new" model will be for free music - that "something will happen," "someone will figure it out."

Maybe. Maybe not.

Not all revolutions are ultimately beneficial. The French Revolution of 1789 began with the most idealistic, Enlightenment-inspired hopes of freedom and inalienable rights. Instead, reality served up the Reign of Terror. Subsequent instability didn't leave an opening for greater freedoms, as the revolutionaries hoped, but the rise of Emperor Napoleon a mere ten years after the Bastille was first stormed.

I don't claim a talent to predict the future better than anyone else. Still, I fear the blowback from Freeloading will render a cultural reality comparable to that of France, when a utopia felt just within reach suddenly turned into freedom's greatest nightmare.

2009: Fuck Love, Let’s Make Dystopia

Revisiting “The Myth Of DIY” and the tragic logic of Freeloading

[December 2009]

Some rules of writing needn’t be articulated due to their mind-numbing self-evidence. Here’s one: “Avoid telling the reader he/she is an ‘asshole.’” In an article published on Tiny Mix Tapes last summer, “The Myth Of DIY” (TMT Feature), I ignored the above rule. I risked alienating some, if not all, of my audience, when I said:

If you find meaning and beauty from a musician’s work and you want them to continue creating it — then you are obliged to support them. If you like the idea of record stores, the people they employ, the values and spirit they promote — then you are obliged to support them. If you’re consistently doing one without the other, then on some level you, not Metallica, are the asshole.

But if we’ve learned anything from the internet, what better than a little profane name-calling to get a point across?

I expected an ambivalent reception to the article and, if I was lucky, hate mail. My hope was not to win friends, but to get a conversation started about the real-world implications of a music culture where few people actually pay for music. I wanted readers to look past the millionaires of Metallica and think more carefully about the prospects for independent artists and labels if a critical mass makes paying for music obsolete. No music critic wanted to appear in sympathy with Metallica or major labels. No artist or record label wanted to appear in opposition to their fans. In the wake of this communication breakdown, the elemental issues of the debate were barely being discussed.

Ambivalence to my article, it turned out, was not an issue. A couple of hateful emails did find their way to my inbox, saying I was just a bitter, failed writer/musician and my arguments had zero merit. I was personally introduced to one of the more charming internet memes - “KYS” (kill yourself). A handful of message board posts popped up, calling my article the “worst file sharing article” of all time. This was the best reaction I could hope for, to at least provoke a few people. The pessimist in me believed any argument against a facet of the internet would be greeted with plugged ears, open hostility, and empty charges of being a Luddite.

But reality offered a nice surprise.

The hate mail was inconsequential in comparison to the many “Thank yous” I received from music fans and musicians alike. Even most of those who didn’t agree with my arguments seemed to reconsider the issue. A favorite email came from a teenager in Texas:

Hey! I just read your article, "The Myth of DIY" and it kind of blew my mind. I, a 17 year-old kid in the suburbs of Texas surviving on a small allowance and the occasional babysitting check, have always pirated music in the spirit of "hey, there’s no way I could afford all the music I love, so I’m sure the bands would want me to listen somehow." I also justify this by buying the occasional record and pirating the rest, but with over 8000 songs on my iPod and a vinyl collection that won’t even fill up a bookshelf, I have to realize that I could have bought more and supported more of my favorite artists, but due to the convenience and free-ness of the internet, simply didn’t.
As someone who tries to support independent businesses over the Wal-Marts and Starbucks that cost less and are easier to find, this hipster ‘share-the-music’ ideology really just comes down to being a load of hypocritical bullshit. SO, thanks for the article, it was a big wake-up call, and I’ll definitely show it to a few friends.

If I’d even gotten through to teenagers, the demographic so often cited by naysayers as a generation lost to the concept of paying for music, perhaps I was on to something. Meanwhile, some of the message boards initiated in complete disdain turned into heartening and substantial discussions of the issue in all of its confusing twists and turns, argumentative dead-ends, and simple truths. I felt optimistic and emboldened, but also more aware of the internet’s dark side.

I became involved in a discussion-turned-argument with a few writers (one, in particular) on the private Tiny Mix Tapes message board. Unfortunately, the exchange turned nasty toward its conclusion and I was reminded of the internet’s ultimate danger. Divorced from face-to-face communication, it’s easy to only see others as representations of ideas you already view as good or bad and become divorced from common humanity, new experience, and responsibility for your words and actions. If global politics were exclusively conducted by message board, we’d have nuked ourselves out of existence long ago.

Online, the illusion is real and reality is replicant. If gone unchecked, a small, incestuous minority can convince themselves of just about anything. In all of the reading, writing, and arguing I engaged in on the subject since “The Myth Of DIY” came out, I’ve been shocked by the incoherent, backward arguments of The Pirate Bay and its ilk. And even as TPB now fades into the background, I fear the warped and childish ideals it has propagated over the years have laid the foundation for a new reality, one that empowers the corporate interests it supposedly despises and leaves us all worse off.

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Sharing, Piracy and Freeloading

Are we talking about “sharing?” Is it “piracy?” I find these terms of debate lacking.

Since kindergarten, we’ve been urged to share, to not be greedy. Neighbors share garden shears, investors share risk, and friends share music. The best way people can share music is probably by listening to it together (in physical presence). But friends have also traded physical vinyl back and forth. Analog tapes gave birth to the mix tape, bootlegs, and the now infamous “Home Taping Is Killing Music: And It’s Illegal” campaign. Then CD-Rs and CD burners came into play. All of these early examples are somewhat inconvenient, cost money, cost time, and involve hand-to-hand sharing. They also necessitate someone actually purchasing the album and making copies for a handful of friends.

When I used Audiogalaxy way back when, I didn’t say, “Hey, I sure feel like sharing some music today,” before I logged on. In most cases, I read about an album, saw a video, heard a song in a cafe or on the radio, then consciously downloaded that artist’s work for free when I was home because I could — not because of some contrived “deep human need to share” as TPB or Lawrence Lessig may cite. In many cases, I’m quite sure I would have purchased the artist’s work if I didn’t have the option to steal it for free.

So while computer networks are functionally means of sharing and copying information, when we enter a torrent search for Ducktails (the artist, not the show), we’re not doing either one of those things in cultural reality. We’re ostensibly accessing an online store where the complete history of recorded music is offered for free. Most of the time, the content is not being offered with permission from the artist or producer. It is effectivelystealing. Cory Doctorow or the EFF can hide behind technicalities and inconsistencies of copyright law (of which there are many) and claim that universal guilt somehow translates to universal innocence and a justified free-for-all, but that does not excuse ignoring basic responsibility for one’s actions. If people want to steal, that’s their choice. At least own up to what’s really going on. The term “file sharing” further muddies an already murky debate.

On similar grounds, I reject the term piracy, used as a substitute for “copyright infringement” or “unlicensed copying.” Piracy traditionally involves reaping some form of monetary profit, which I know most downloaders have no interest in. Also, it lends an unearned, romantic quality to the very unsexy practice of uploading and downloading bits of digital information. Here I do give TPB credit for appropriating the initially derisive term and making it their own. For a bunch of scraggly anarchists, they were remarkably media savvy.

I propose a new terminology with the hope of zeroing-in on this complex issue: Freeloading. The Freeloader uploads and downloads unlicensed content as if it is free. Most Freeloaders have mixed feelings about their actions and are unsure whether they’re ultimately ethical, helpful to musicians, or harmful to the record industry. But they engage in the practice because, after all, it’s free, and it feels like a victimless crime. But other Freeloaders, like TPB, believe in Freeloading as an ideal, that it will set culture free, purify music, and strike against the evil capitalists. Then there are the apologists for Freeloading, like Lawrence Lessig, Cory Doctorow, and Chris Anderson. While they are careful not to endorse the act of Freeloading outright, they proclaim that technology’s wisdom is self-evident and almost always above question.

I’m partial to the definition:

Free∙load∙er
noun
A person who takes advantage of others’ generosity without giving anything in return.

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Reverse Arguments

No one was arguing in 1998 that Freeloading would make a better world. No one was bemoaning the grand injustice that one had to pay for recorded music. Many record prices were too high, sure, but consumers asked for lower prices, not the obliteration of pricing. Some labels may have taken advantage of artists, but the hope was for better terms on record label contracts, not the obliteration of record labels.

A stroke of technological convergence allowed for Freeloading. While eBooks and tablets are just beginning to be tinkered with for the purposes of digital Books, Newspapers, and Magazines, MP3s found their happy home in the iPod much earlier. The year everything changed was 2001, when Napster shut down and the iPod was first released. It was also the start of the record industry’s steady collapse.

Digital technology set the ideal conditions for widespread Freeloading, and thanks to the Napster v. Metallica debate, the action even felt democratic. Freeloading rapidly spread among young, internet-savvy consumers. People loved the thrill and excitement of being able to find anything they were looking for, for free. It was too good to be true. What wasn’t to like?

We had been told everyday of our lives by advertisers and marketers that we could have anything we wanted, that our infinite human desires could be satisfied. But Freeloading took that insatiable demand for More and made it amplified and limitless. This felt pure, revolutionary, and real.

But artists and producers began to take notice. Some began to fight against the practice. Now, rather than simply “doing it,” any exuberant Freeloader had to come up with a counter-argument. No one wants to see themselves as destroying music or hurting artists. No one likes to admit to stealing.

But rather than seriously and honestly try to evaluate the original practice of taking artists’ works without their permission and its likely effects, their argument started with the assumption that Freeloading had to be okay. It had to be a good thing, only because they wanted to believe it so badly and had likely grown addicted to the practice. Since then, Freeloaders have worked backwards, searching anywhere possible for splinters of justification. That’s what we continue to see today.

* * *

Freeloading says that music is free because it “feels” free, because it can be had for free. No regard is given for the elemental fact that if permission is not granted by the producer or artist, if they’re explicitly offering the product and asking you to pay for it, then one is both taking and stealing. The argument that because music can be had for free, so it isfree, is the justification of the schoolyard bully, the plundering Empire, and, yes, the pirate.

Freeloaders say no expressed idea or recording has an intrinsic value. It’s like water, everywhere and naturally occurring. Music is everyone’s, so we’re justified in taking it. No artists’ labor has an intrinsic “monetary” value, and we all need to just get over the dirty concept.

If one is to maintain that music has no inherent value, though, they must also accept that nothing else has an inherent value. And they’re right. No one’s labor or work has a predetermined, objective value aside from the value others ascribe to it via the system of consumer markets. But within our system, a consumer’s willingness to pay for an item determines its value. By maintaining that all music is free, the Freeloader guarantees all music being comparatively worthless. To them, a beer or a pack of cigarettes apparently contains more value than any work of art. In the process, Philip Morris and Anheuser-Busch are rewarded for their investment by the paying consumer while record labels and artists are left for dead.

So while Freeloaders are buying clothes, food, drugs, and toothpaste, the music they supposedly need above all else gets left out in the cold — along with the artists who made it and the label that supported and promoted it. If what the consumer/person most deeply “loves” has no relative value, what does that say about their own relationship to human-made art and beauty, to our capacities for gratitude and consideration? It’s a cold, loveless worldview. The portrait of human beings submitting to microchip spirituality. That is the philosophy of Freeloading at its most extreme, one its conscientious practitioners try so hard to flee, ignore, or drape in phony idealism.

Surveying the arguments, I’ve come across the qualifying phrase, “In our current economic system…” This implies that some vastly differentiated economic model is just over the horizon. But the commodity system isn’t going anywhere. A world without humans setting value via payment would be a world without money, a hopelessly utopian illusion the Freeloading movement for some reason allows itself.

But I may be just as guilty of allowing myself utopian illusions, that consumers can step back for a moment to intellectualize the commodity system as one of utilitarian support for artists. Just because you’re not holding a piece of vinyl in your hand, the producers of cherished music are no less entitled to compensation. Then again, one can make another choice, that the producer is entitled to nothing, no matter how much their work has enriched one’s life.

When you see a Britney Spears CD priced at $20 or read of a painting auctioned for millions, of course the commodity system for art appears crude. It is crude. How can anyone put a dollar sign on it? That said, on balance it may be the best system we can hope for. One of the ultimate questions in this debate is, does the commodification of art cheapen it or actually provide an infrastructure of support in which an artist’s work can survive and flourish?

Much of this debate is inspired by an uneasiness with capitalism’s shortcomings and the sense that greedy corporations are more in control of the music we hear than fans or even artists. Freeloading was spawned just after a period when major labels gorged on revenues from boy bands and teen queens, easily marketed to their audience via another scourge to independent music fans, MTV’s TRL. In 2001, Metallica seemed perfectly aligned with major label interests, and the majors remain the primary enemy of Freeloaders.

But the appropriate punishment for major labels putting out mediocre music isn’t to rationalize a blood-letting of the entire industry, it’s to throw support behind smaller labels who need and deserve it. Paying for recordings costs money. Distribution (both online and off) costs money. Promotion, just as vital as ever, costs money. Labels like Jagjaguwar or Thrill Jockey or Matador offer artists a needed platform, and the only artists who can afford to go it (more or less) alone, like Radiohead or NIN, only have the option after years of the most "corporate" kind of heavy-handed, major label support. I can only assume there’s a good reason why their pay-what-you-want experiments have remained so very isolated.

People want as much shit as possible for free. That’s the foundation of Freeloading. It is hyper-consumerist, not anti-consumerist, and appeals to our lowest common denominator — irrational desires for appropriation and endless pleasure without consequence.

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Tragic Logic

No one knows what to do.

Some say music needs to operate on a model of patronage, as in the era before recorded music, so artists don’t need to worry about selling albums. Others promote instituting a voluntary collective license. No one is totally sure how this would be funded, but it would allow Freeloading to continue more or less unabated. Artists and labels would eventually be compensated according to the frequency of downloads. Related to this is the IP tax, in which customers pay a few extra dollars a month for their broadband, and the pot of funds would be distributed according to frequency of downloads.

These ideas are interesting, sure, but are they particularly realistic? How long would it take to actually set up such a system of compensation for artists based on download frequency, and what dire straits would the music industry be in by that point? Do we really want a government-run organization allocating funds to artists? I place more faith in tech-savvy teenagers finding new ways to Freeload than I do in the government’s ability to stop them or establish a centralized system.

What seems most realistic to me is a patronage model, but not one financed by the Nobles of yore. I fear we are sewing the seeds for a corporate patronage model. And rather than setting artists free from the constraints of commodities, having to market themselves to fans and major labels, they may increasingly need to instead market themselves to car companies, banks, media conglomerates, insurance companies, etc.

What I see as potentially tragic is that this is the complete opposite of Freeloading’s supposed goal. It’s supposed to make music less commercial. In actuality, it may make musicians so desperate that they have no choice but to become more commercial. The fans and musicians end up with less power than before and even bigger, maybe nastier, corporations come out in greater control of the fate of artists.

How any of this is preferable to a consumer directly supporting artists and labels through the commodity system, albeit an intellectualized one, I don’t understand. Ideally, independent labels would become more open in this debate and explain what a fair royalty rate actually looks like. Perhaps the parameters of fairer record deals can become known and publicized, so consumers can support labels and artists with a bit more confidence. This may exert upward pressure on bigger and bigger labels to offer better and better deals, if they see consumers respond in the same way coffee drinkers flock to Fair Trade. That’s myidealistic fantasy.

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Dystopia v. Utopia

One of the comments on my original article stuck with me the most. The reader lamented the lack of balance in our discussion of the issue. Either the downfall of the music industry is all the internet’s fault, they wrote, or it’s given a free pass and everyone else is to blame. I agree entirely. The internet primarily makes our communication and commerce more efficient, but it doesn’t eliminate the need for businesses and institutions to reap some profit in order to survive. It reduces production costs, but doesn’t eliminate them. A company that doesn’t earn revenues or secure investment online will eventually go out of business, just like in the real world. In the case of music and media, the internet ought to allow us to more directly and efficiently compensate the content producers (artists, labels, writers, publishers). The rise of the MP3 should cause the unfortunate shuttering of many record stores, at least those without a devoted clientele. That kind of shift makes sense. But deciding not to pay for music on some warped principle isn’t the internet’s fault, it’s the fault of shortsighted consumers and the music community at large for allowing Freeloading to expand unchecked. Institutions require investment online, just as in the real world. Otherwise they perish.

No doubt the internet is an amazing, powerful development of human history, freeing up information and helping us manifest our greatest hopes and dreams. It can catalyze the election of our first black President or shed sunlight upon a repressive Iranian regime. It can erase boundaries of geography and spirit. It can facilitate a more verdant artistic culture. New, compelling voices can find an audience regardless of birthright. A music fan is no longer dependent on Clear Channel-owned radio or having a great record store in their area. We can sample more music on our terms than we ever thought possible. A cultural meritocracy can be more realized.

But if no one casts their vote of support via payment, then what good is any of this technology?

Without the consumer’s direct support, labels will continue to perish and great bands will have to dramatically scale back their operations. Publishing companies will lock their doors. Magazines and newspapers will continue their agonizing death, and the loudest voices in media will be the ones who can already afford not to be adequately paid.

The internet offers individuals greater power than we’ve ever had, but with this technology comes responsibility. We can accept this and use the internet in ways that deliver on its promise of democracy, openness, and progress. Or, thinking ourselves powerless and passive, we can sit back and watch as everything lasting and healthy about our media culture fades into history. There’s nothing inherently good or bad about the internet — it has potential for either. It’s what we choose to do with it that matters.

The closing moments of Steal This Film 2, the online documentary produced in part by TPB, might come close to capturing this entire debate. At the very least, it captures the sublime irony of Freeloading.

The final image is not one of hope or dreams, but of destruction. We see a large building repeatedly collapse into rubble. As the credits ominously roll, the makers of the film plead with the viewer to donate, of all things, money. After all their talk of the cheapening infection of money upon art and ideas, that lazy musicians (however talented) and bloated film companies were simply wrong to expect payment for their recordings and productions, the cocky anarchists of The Pirate Bay ask for monetary donations not once... but twice.

Someone, I suppose, needed to pay their production costs.

Sarah Palin: "Back Assward"

2009-11-18T18:06:00.002-05:00

Say what you will about the soul-crushing, apocalyptic fury in store for a nation that elects Sarah Palin to national office, but the retired Governor sure does keep the hits coming.

Yes, she calls Obama's economic policies "Back Assward." Is that like a double negative, saying "Ass Backward" ass backward?

And Then There's This (ATTT)

2009-11-09T15:45:00.004-05:00

Meth Teeth!

This blog is broken and I plan on keeping it that way. There are too many other ideas which require action at the moment, ones this space will track and record as days go by.

Today it's warm in New York. This I enjoy, yet look forward to the prolonged cold and its annual promise of productivity. Tonight I'm working on a forthcoming article on Future Of The Left, a possible review of the above band, and a pesky screenplay project I've resolved to beat into submission.

My friends in the Leisure Birds (ex Thunder In The Valley, comrades of Vampire Hands, DOTS) have finally posted some music to their myspace.

I'll see you.

A Song For The Fall, by The Fresh And Onlys

2009-11-03T14:10:00.001-05:00

Stephen Fry and the Reality Of Potential

2009-11-02T10:19:00.003-05:00

In discussing the continuous handwringing over our new digital selves, author Stephen Fry hits at the key idea as we move forward: balance.

"Where people make their critical error and criticize all this and think it's a danger and is reducing our capacity to act as proper human beings is they think it's all this: You either sit in front of a screen of some kind, tapping away all your life, going 'LOL' and being childish, and not writing in proper English sentences, or you sit in an old-fashioned study with books, and you read properly and you engage properly and you go for walks. Well, I do both. And most people do both. It is not one or the other."

On the other hand, if one takes Marshall McLuhan seriously, it's also true that the new mediums of the screen essentially do change the way we operate as beings and relate to the world, even if in apparently minor ways. This mutation, it follows, will amplify in those who embrace the technology more than others. We ought to consider, as technology becomes more and more advanced, where that ever-shifting line of balance resides with the awareness that technology offers the individual power and potential to make choices both good and bad. Fry is right that nothing is inherently perfect or evil in the technology. In that sense, very little has changed. We confront the same problems of free will as always.

"All media exist to invest our lives with artificial perceptions and arbitrary values."

-Marshall McLuhan

New Atlas Jam: Bradford As Phil Collins - Better Than Phil Collins

2009-10-23T14:03:00.005-04:00

Atlas Sound performed this same (unknown) song at their Music Hall of Wiliamsburg show last week during the biblical plague of CMJ which casts its bloodsucking demons across New York City each autumn, a tour of the industry undead enjoying their own early version of Halloween. But all those costumed locusts, they're gone for another year, all fattened up for their lean winter weeks of scant press release and promotional opportunity.

So...

After establishing an arpeggio loop, watch as Cox moves to the drums. The loop has a slight timing hiccup, but you get the idea. At the MHOW show I attended, the performance was flawless.

This one blew me away live. It's one of the best examples of Bradford Cox' style of psychedelic expansion - mixing his supreme instinct for melody with free rolling rhythm, undulating volume, and trance-inducing repetition. The show was beautiful, peppered with easy going stage banter amid the lushly arranged songs. The Selmanaires proved a superb backing band for Bradford's death-infused, ascendant compositions.

"This is a song about my Dad," Bradford said before performing "Criminals." The song is easy to overlook on Logos, pinned between the dueling pop bliss of "Walkabout" and "Sheila." But a few listens in, it's my favorite track on the album. Here, the song is slowed down a bit and he adds harmonica. Evidently, the lead guitar was mixed quite high in the house right speakers.

You Tube sounds like shit.

2009-10-12T22:14:00.002-04:00

Wilco Weds

Young Lovers

Rants: Gawker's Phony Belief System

2009-10-09T15:02:00.005-04:00

I find it similarly entertaining and infuriating when Gawker steps back, puts the adderall back in the desk drawer for a few minutes, and pretends to actually believe in something, anything. Of course an FTC conference on how to preserve the Fourth Estate while in the midst of all this digital tumult would get the editors riled up. To Gawker Media, investigative reporting is "boring," and a concern over public affairs news is nothing but a desire to preserve the status quo. This author, John Cook, goes on an infantile rant and bates the Government to release more sensitive information if they're "really" concerned about public affairs reporting.

Of course, the government protects its information as it sees fit. It's up to a strong network of, yes, public affairs reporters to diligently find the institutional cracks and expose relevant truths - but that won't happen if all journalism is boiled further down to the dirty resin of gossip, said resin best exemplified by Gawker itself. Yes Gawker, whine about the floated idea of tax breaks for newspapers and how the stellar ascendence of TMZ, Big Government, Politico, and you is being impeded. If those are your best examples, it appears you've just made an argument for the other side. Gawker and TMZ as valued journalistic institutions is nothing if not dystopian. Is that where we want this tool, the internet, to take us?

This problem is a complicated and serious one with many interlocking issues and concerns. To weigh a few ideas isn't a "horrendously bad idea," it's a simple act of responsibility - truly an alien term for Gawker Media. The commission doesn't even meet until December, and then they will begin to determine what might be fair and what might work. Maybe they'll even figure out how to preserve Gawker's host industry, they being the leach - everybody wins. Gawker's petty nihilism in the face of journalism's apparent death throes is a sad, pathetic statement as they happily provide all the worst the internet has to offer.

"I Wish My Memory Worked Differently."

2009-10-08T14:12:00.003-04:00

In this New York Times piece from early August, Verlyn Klinkenborg asks of his past self, "Was I as addicted to the future then as I seem to be now?"

2009-10-08T13:42:00.000-04:00

The Silent Barn: Kurt Vile // Part One from Ray Concepcioñ on Vimeo.

Quick Words: Jay Is Angry

2009-10-06T13:44:00.003-04:00

My condolences go out to Jay Reatard upon seeing that his entire rhythm section has suddenly quit. Perhaps this is a blessing in disguise as it doesn't sound like things were exactly working out to begin with. When I interviewed Jay many months back, he seemed like a good guy who is committed to music and in it for all the right reasons.

Here's to him (quickly) finding some guys who can "play for shit."

The Environmental Responsibility Of The Ethics Of The Downloading

2009-10-06T12:37:00.005-04:00

An interesting article over at Slate, where they looked into the environmental impact of CDs versus MP3s and Vinyl. No big surprises. The infinite efficiency (if lower listening quality) of the MP3 wins out. Jewel cases, they say, are terrible for the environment. The carbon footprint of going to the record store isn't so bad, however, if you walk or bike there - an increasingly difficult proposition in many areas.

Buying CDs a couple of years ago, it seemed that cardboard sleeves used for CDs would become the new standard - at least for smaller labels. But, I still see a fair amount of hard plastic on New Release walls.

I wonder about the environmental impact of all our computer technology. Some of our "recycled" electronics end up in smoking toxic pits (see below), where workers and their children don't use masks while extracting valuable scrap metals from the used products.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

2009-10-06T12:16:00.000-04:00