Interestingly enough, Steve Albini has weighed in on the David Lowery thing. Lots of good material, including some of the more obvious points I made, but I like this quote:
Explain a mechanism to enforce payment for listening to music then. I mean, without that there’s nothing else worth debating. Even if such a thing were possible, only music people already wanted would get paid for and nobody would ever hear new music because why would he pay for an unheard song? If it’s free for a little while until people like it, then they have to pay for it, then while it’s free it will be copied and distributed later for free.
Whatever the industry or individuals think should happen, until somebody comes up with a mechanism (hint: They won’t, it’s a paradox and impossible) then the ethics of music sharing are moot. This doesn’t just apply to the consumers, it applies to the hosts.
A presentation given by David Lowery of Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker (and apparently an investor in Groupon?) on the shift from the record company model to the internet model.
Some things he gets right:
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Apple’s cut is ridiculous.
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People crying that you need to “get a new model” is indeed suspect, because… what is it? Offer a solution. I differ with him in that I think that the shouts are directed at major labels, not at him.
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The artist-to-consumer method, ditching indie or major labels and cutting out the middleman, does work for two groups: major artists recently free of their contracts, and super narrow genre artists with a built-in audience because of that genre.
Some places where I question:
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Spotify and other streaming services are a black box for a reason, and it’s not the fault of the services themselves. GigaOM had a pretty detailed post about every bit of information that’s available (not much) on how they price, and basically the standard 10 bucks a month is bare minimum break-even territory, which is why they do partner deals like MOG with BMW/Mini. And the cause for all of these factors is the record companies. The fact that Michael Robertson of MP3Tunes wrote the article I don’t think invalidates it, as much as Lowery doesn’t appear to like the guy’s stance.
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The EFF as an arm of either piracy or The Man is kinda laughable. What the EFF and other lobby groups try to do is keep policy from going down the SOPA route, i.e. cut the entire internet off at the knees in response to the (faaaaaaar more powerful) media lobby’s desire to curb piracy. And policies relating even vaguely to piracy are a pretty small part of what they deal with.
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When groups like the EFF talk about intellectual property, I’m sure Lowery has to understand with his claims that he “can out geek any of you” that their primary concern is actually software IP and the patent lawsuits that are stifling that industry. Not to mention: Of course John Perry Barlow wants to get his royalty checks, but he also helped enable bootlegging culture even before Camper Van were organizing tape trees, so I don’t think his position is quite as hypocritical as Lowery makes it out to be.
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He says you only hear the bad stories of record labels beacuse obviously those that have the bad experiences are going to shout the loudest. No one’s going to say “boy I had a great experience.” Probably true. But I and plenty of other people have re-read Steve Albini’s “The Problem With Music” enough times to understand that even if it’s not quite Albini’s “trench of liquid poop” metaphor then at least it’s somewhere in the middle. I doubt it’s rosy though.
Overall, there is a lot of generalization when it comes to “the technology world” (“technologists” are painted as pirates or Richard Stallmans), but there are also some salient points that a lot of people in the debate probably miss. It’s good to hear from someone who understands some of the tech but is coming from the media side, and neither the UMG “home taping is killing the industry” media side nor the Chumbawamba “give it all away, burn a flag while you’re at it” full-on anarchy side. It might be a painful or sad truth to him, but it’s a truth nonetheless, that a lot of indie artists do not agree with him because the promise of distribution and discovery is too great, and we’ll worry about getting paid later.
(Source: habanerocollective, via ihatemyparents)
It’s been a long time since I used Propellerhead Reason. Some later Parvulus live shows featured it running on a laptop because its simplicity lent itself to hardware drum machine and synth syncing. I also made most of the first couple Impercept records on it — the process was to sample some sounds, load them into the Redrum drum machine module, and start going from there. The pattern sequencers let you start a song fast and finish it without a lot of hassle. Ultimately, the limited number of sounds and the frankly really poor mixer led me away and into the world of VSTs with Cubase. But I recently started playing with Reason Essentials, a cheap package that’s basically the same software that the full Reason v1 was 10 years ago when I was using it. One sampler, one subtractive synth, one drum sampler, a pattern sequencer, and a few effects. You could basically simulate it with the base install of Cubase (NN-XT sampler = Halion SE, Subtractor = Prologue/Spector/Mystic, and Redrum = Groove Agent with an 808-style pattern sequencer).
But the point is, you don’t.
When you have the options with Cubase or Logic or whatever to expand, you do. You find weird free stuff, you buy crazy Orchestral packages or Izotope photoshop samplers and other crazy plugins, you add recorded audio… your boundaries expand. And you kind of get overwhelmed.
But limitations are great for creativity, and getting back into Reason has been fun for that very reason. The sounds are pretty much limitless when it comes to drums, and the Subtractor has enough oscillators and filters to get a lot of unique synth textures. And I finally made ReWire, the protocol for stringing Reason (or Ableton) tracks into other more heavy duty DAWs, work. So I’m piping individual Reason tracks into Pro Tools for mixing. Very fun. Now the sonic shortcomings of Reason are not really an issue.
ok that’s funny.
Pro Tools shortcut stickers for the keyboard (Taken with instagram)
Salt Lick (meat world) (Taken with instagram)
Hot rod show on congress (Taken with instagram)
At East Side Pies (Taken with instagram)
Made with Paper
