The RIAA Armageddon has begun

Linkous overdosed on antidepressants at the height of his success. and in the last 7 years of his life cobbled together one Sparklehorse album partially with previously released tracks. and remained on a major label his whole career even with indie-level sales. the whole thing was pretty sad, and i was crushed to hear about his suicide. but i don't imagine there's any scenario where he'd be alive today because of bigger royalty checks.

industry downturns are just part of the sad circle of life

"that's really sad about your friends, david. here, have some rationalizations about how they were doomed even if their lives had not been negatively effected by a change in economy."

To me the stories of Chesnutt and Linkous seem more linked to the poor state of our nation's healthcare system than illegal downloading but what do I know.

Obviously national health care is a bigger issue than downloading, but they're tied together, you know. These guys had expensive problems, and lack of money may have had a role in treating them, go figure.

Also, lame to dismiss this as Lowery playing them as chips. They were flat-out friends of his. Peers, colleagues, neighbors and friends. And per Albini, he can be totally reasonable, but to paint/taint Chesnutt and Linkous somehow as windfall beneficiaries of major label largesse ... I dunno, man. Those guys were pretty marginal.

If anything, Linkous and Chesnutt are actually examples of how major labels were free to spend money on more marginal acts when the getting was good.

i think that's Albini's point. those guys never had mass appeal but a couple years of living off of unrealistic label budgets can permanently screw up someone's personal finances, and income/expense ratios.

Albini has this horse that he rides as a hobby...

Band gets advance pre first album, everyone celebrates (including label people) on the ticket, makes album.

Band gets told 2nd album is required, but as 1st album didn't sell a mill, budget is smaller. Band eats sensibly.

Band gets told 3rd album is due, but no budget at all. band pack in, label goes OK see you, etc.

don't know if it's correct in those cases, but that seemed to be what he was getting at.

the thing that people don't get a lot of times about anti-major label philosophies is that it's more from a place of fiscal responsibility than not caring about money. Ian Mackaye places a lot of pride in the fact that Dischord never lost money on a project, because they never overinvested in anything with unrealistic expectations for the return, which is basically the case with the overwhelming majority of major label albums.

xpost

yeah, albini's point is more along the lines of major label deals being designed to keep artists indentured in debt, company store type stuff

"that's really sad about your friends, david. here, have some rationalizations about how they were doomed even if their lives had not been negatively effected by a change in economy."

― da croupier, Tuesday, June 19, 2012 9:52 AM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark

that's exactly the kind of thing i was lamenting when i said it's kind of unfortunate that DL made them the focal point of the discussion. because look, now we're talking about these two people instead of the larger context in which he brought them up, and the same thing is probably happening on a hundred other sites at the moment.

wow

talk about killing the messenger

"it's just a shame he brought his friends out to be rationalized away by us internet assholes"

I seriously doubt Linkous and Chesnutt were raking in the cash. And Albini's general point is sound. It's porting these specific dudes into his model that is problematic. I'm not sure how less money would have helped two guys with depressive streaks, one a drug addict and the other a paraplegic. Lowery specifically cites a decline in lost income over the last decade in their cases. They were good friends, you'd think he would know.

I do wonder about some of Lowery's later stats, namely this stuff:

Of the 75,000 albums released in 2010 only 2,000 sold more than 5,000 copies. Only 1,000 sold more than 10,000 copies. Without going into details, 10,000 albums is about the point where independent artists begin to go into the black on professional album production, marketing and promotion.

At the peak of flushness - say, the year 2000 - how many albums were selling more than 5000 copies? More than 10,000? I have a weird feeling those numbers have been pretty much stable for a long time.

well, i bet he has a lot of broke musician friends, but he chose to only name the two that recently killed themselves. maybe that was an emotional choice, maybe it was chosen to put an emotional charge into his argument. either way i'm not sure it was a very wise choice.

if only lowery realized the kneejerk defensiveness he'd get from music fans who don't want to admit their complicity in fucking over musicians

who are we talking about here. i bought a copy of the last Sparklehorse album AND reviewed it, man, my conscience is clean.

oh your best-of-years run way too deep to be wholly above ground

It's vital to the argument that Lowery name names in this case, that he puts a face on the problem, however extreme. I think it's a wise choice because it was an emotional choice, or chosen to put an emotional charge into his argument Otherwise, it's just another academic "there's this band..." situation, and I find it as frustrating as anyone that so much of this debate takes place in a vacuum. For example, I certainly appreciate Albini's famous Baffler essay, but it would have been better with specifics. It's also why those Sweet Relief comps, while raising money for everyone, were linked to specific acts.

oh your best-of-years run way too deep to be wholly above ground

― da croupier, Tuesday, June 19, 2012 10:10 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

oh i'm living in the cloud now, man, i might not have bought a Sparklehorse album on CD if it came out in the last 4 years. i was just cherrypicking a convenient example because it was there, obv.

the thing that people don't get a lot of times about anti-major label philosophies is that it's more from a place of fiscal responsibility than not caring about money. Ian Mackaye places a lot of pride in the fact that Dischord never lost money on a project

Mackaye has also been very lucky that life has not yet intervened in his idealism. How did indie idealism work out for J. Robbins when the medical bills started piling up? Fortunately fans and friends have been very generous with their time and money, but the implication is that the money he made as an (I imagine successful) independent artist was simply not enough, and I do not blame his dalliance with Atlantic for that.

It's just as valid to cite the number of free CDs given to Journalists / outlets / radio stations / etc.

how is it 'idealism' to always attempt to operate at a profit instead of going for the big risk/big reward gambit of more ambitious music industry go-getters?

i'm totally sympathetic to the "hey artist, get a real job/go indie" logic when it's just some guitarist bitching about how the world doesn't want to buy them a cadillac (JD Samson's "i was lied to by the star machine" huffpo piece is a good example), but lowery laying out how the scene got shittier for artists - and not just for major label folks - can really only be read as that if you feel the need to rationalize away the point.

that's the disconnect for me, it seems like people want to paint "i want to own my masters and not answer to an A&R when writing my songs" as a more pie-in-the-sky career priority than "i want to sell a million records and be world famous no matter what it takes" (xpost)

it's a really stupid piece, stop defending it

xpost

"why are you comfortable with spending money on a college education and not recorded music"

...

ok, lefestz

i thought that part of the post was his strongest argument

It seems to be OK for a music artist to live with his guitar for company and make a sustainable existance, as opposed to us with proper jobs that can go off on holidays, eat out, buy clothes and CDs and stuff.

guess I sit somewhere between lefsetz and lowery. yeah the lowery piece was patronizing but that's the nature of agit-prop. if it made a couple ppl say to themselves, hey my budget for music is fucked up, maybe I should make an effort to buy an album once a month, then that's cool.

I agree w/ lefsetz to the extant that the game has changed and artists need to respond to that, and the smart ones have. to me the current gold standard is swans, gira's done a great job of dealing direct w/ fans to finance his operations and I have to assume he's doing better than if he'd gone the traditional route of signing to an indie label. however, he's still very vocal about his dislike of the reigning consumer attitude of "music is free". so you can follow lefsetz's path but still feel the way lowery does, those two viewpoints are not necessarily at odds with each other.

it is weird to hear musicians be nostalgic for the good time 80s/90s. being a musician didn't ever seem like an easy road. in the 80s indie acts complained non-stop about ripoff distributors and shoddily run labels, and albini's right that the 90s co-opting of the underground by major labels did a disservice to a lot of folks' music careers.

lowery's "you care about foxconn, but not me?" bit is overreaching, but the basic point that people are cavalier about contributing nothing to enjoy a culture they claim to love is pretty dead on

David Lowery is the drummer for Gay Dad.

it is weird to hear musicians be nostalgic for the good time 80s/90s. being a musician didn't ever seem like an easy road. in the 80s indie acts complained non-stop about ripoff distributors and shoddily run labels,

how's Grant Hart's financial status these days?

how is it 'idealism' to always attempt to operate at a profit instead of going for the big risk/big reward gambit of more ambitious music industry go-getters?

It's not a strictly binary dialectic here. It's not a black and white thing. There's nothing wrong with idealism. But I think often idealism falters when things get less ... ideal. For example, Mackaye is an idol of mine, on many fronts, and proof that there is a successful way to make a living as an independent artist. And yet he's not paraplegic, or depressive, or with a son with a congenital disease. If he were any of those things, he may have been tempted, at least once, to take major label money, or do something that infringes on his idealism, just as many people take shitty jobs just for the health care, or to help pay the bills.

xpost I think Grant makes money as an artist. Like Chris Mars.

Marc Masters' mention of the piece on FB led to a lot of back and forth; you'll see some familiar names in the comments (besides my opening snark, obv.)

https://www.facebook.com/marc.masters/posts/10151830688220707

link dnw

yeah i think DL's point is worth making to young people who spend discretionary income on all sorts of things but not music. but at a certain point when he's lecturing someone who was in 3rd grade when Napster happened, it's probably also worth pointing out that they didn't start the fire. (xpost)

it seems like people want to paint "i want to own my masters and not answer to an A&R when writing my songs" as a more pie-in-the-sky career priority than "i want to sell a million records and be world famous no matter what it takes

I just finished that Paul Trynka bio of Bowie and even a Rock Star of his stature didn't own his masters until 1999 after being royally fucked out of millions.

it's probably also worth pointing out that they didn't start the fire.

especially if your mouth is full of s'mores

?

i refuse to elucidate my glorious metaphor

the smores are mp3 files

Fluffy bunny?

i filled your mom's mouth with s'mores

peculiarly enough i still mean 'music piracy' there though

I just finished that Paul Trynka bio of Bowie and even a Rock Star of his stature didn't own his masters until 1999 after being royally fucked out of millions.

But he part owned them already by the late eighties, IIRC? So better than might have been the case. I think the only album he doesn't have any specific rights to at all is the first, self-titled one.

yeah i mean 'owning your master recordings' as something even on the radar of many musicians as any kind of priority seems like a relatively recent development that we can probably thank diy indie for to some extent

if only lowery realized the kneejerk defensiveness he'd get from music fans who don't want to admit their complicity in fucking over musicians

Perhaps if he hadn't just completely eliminated the industry's long history in fucking over musicians in favor of jumping straight from "Artist controls everything" to "Post-Napster Music Apocalypse".