talk about killing the messenger
― da croupier, Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:04 (eleven years ago) link
"it's just a shame he brought his friends out to be rationalized away by us internet assholes"
― da croupier, Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:05 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:06 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― here's my lumber, so jack me maybe (some dude), Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:07 (eleven years ago) link
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
― da croupier, Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:08 (eleven years ago) link
who are we talking about here. i bought a copy of the last Sparklehorse album AND reviewed it, man, my conscience is clean.
― here's my lumber, so jack me maybe (some dude), Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:09 (eleven years ago) link
oh your best-of-years run way too deep to be wholly above ground
― da croupier, Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:10 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:11 (eleven years ago) link
― 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.
― here's my lumber, so jack me maybe (some dude), Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:16 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:17 (eleven years ago) link
It's just as valid to cite the number of free CDs given to Journalists / outlets / radio stations / etc.
― Mark G, Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:18 (eleven years ago) link
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?
― here's my lumber, so jack me maybe (some dude), Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:20 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― da croupier, Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:21 (eleven years ago) link
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)
― here's my lumber, so jack me maybe (some dude), Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:22 (eleven years ago) link
it's a really stupid piece, stop defending it
― thomp, Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:23 (eleven years ago) link
xpost
"why are you comfortable with spending money on a college education and not recorded music"
...
― thomp, Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:24 (eleven years ago) link
ok, lefestz
― da croupier, Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:24 (eleven years ago) link
i thought that part of the post was his strongest argument
― Mr. Que, Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:25 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― Mark G, Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:25 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― diamanda ram dass (Edward III), Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:27 (eleven years ago) link
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
― da croupier, Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:28 (eleven years ago) link
David Lowery is the drummer for Gay Dad.
― thomp, Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:29 (eleven years ago) link
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?
― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:30 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:31 (eleven years ago) link
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
― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:31 (eleven years ago) link
link dnw
― Mark G, Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:32 (eleven years ago) link
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)
― here's my lumber, so jack me maybe (some dude), Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:33 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:33 (eleven years ago) link
it's probably also worth pointing out that they didn't start the fire.
especially if your mouth is full of s'mores
― da croupier, Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:36 (eleven years ago) link
?
― here's my lumber, so jack me maybe (some dude), Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:37 (eleven years ago) link
i refuse to elucidate my glorious metaphor
― da croupier, Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:38 (eleven years ago) link
the smores are mp3 files
― Mr. Que, Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:38 (eleven years ago) link
Fluffy bunny?
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:38 (eleven years ago) link
i filled your mom's mouth with s'mores
peculiarly enough i still mean 'music piracy' there though
― thomp, Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:38 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:41 (eleven years ago) link
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
― here's my lumber, so jack me maybe (some dude), Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:44 (eleven years ago) link
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".
― Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau), Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:45 (eleven years ago) link
Let's just be thankful that before file sharing no musician died broke and unhappy.
People keep saying stuff like this, which seems to boil down to "because musicians have always had it hard, there's nothing wrong with people availing themselves of musicians' labor withing paying for it." I'm more sympathetic than most artists I know to filesharing, but that logic is nonsense.
Filesharing however is reality, it's not going to change & all parsings of it are pointless: it's like resenting osmosis. So in this matter I'm pretty Lefsetzian even though I can't read him for more than a few lines without getting hives: you have to get out on the road & stay there, and you have to remain compelling live & kick ass every night, and if you don't, you're going to go hungry. That is a damn shame - there are plenty of great artists for whom the live arena just isn't the best venue - but those are the breaks; the future belongs to the charismatic, for better or worse, probably worse.
― decrepit but free (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:46 (eleven years ago) link
your stuff is kind of incoherent here man - you seem to routinely be arguing that since somebody's always been fucking artists over, it might as well be their fans
― decrepit but free (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:47 (eleven years ago) link
The principal reason, according to Trynka, why Bowie approved the Bowie Bonds thing was so he could use the advance to buy his songs.
― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:47 (eleven years ago) link
those who can play live play live. those who cannot charge twice as much for DJ sets.
― here's my lumber, so jack me maybe (some dude), Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:47 (eleven years ago) link
shakin my fist @ rich-ass DJs
― decrepit but free (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:48 (eleven years ago) link
because musicians have always had it hard, there's nothing wrong with people availing themselves of musicians' labor withing paying for it
Yeah i didn't say this. Just trying to smash the ridiculous golden age this guy is painting by leaving the industry completely out of the conversation.
― Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau), Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:48 (eleven years ago) link
why though
― da croupier, Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:48 (eleven years ago) link
― decrepit but free (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Tuesday, June 19, 2012 10:48 AM (22 seconds ago) Bookmark
ha i'm just sayin, i think the uncharismatic studio rats will be aight
― here's my lumber, so jack me maybe (some dude), Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:49 (eleven years ago) link
Matches with what I'd heard. Nice move if you can do it (the Rolling Stones have to be pissed they didn't think of that).
― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:50 (eleven years ago) link
I mean ideally, nobody would be fucking over musicians. I am a musician.
Pointing out that the industry has been fucking over musicians does not mean I support stealing music. It's that this guy has painted a pretty unrealistic and idealistic portrait of the pre-filesharing music industry. I feel the need to bring that up because he has left it out of the discussion, on that page at least.
― Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau), Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:50 (eleven years ago) link
xpost Aero, at your commercial peak, as such, I'd be really curious how reliable your record sales were/are. Like, ever enough to impart a certain level of comfort/freedom, or never enough to put the hustle on hold?
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 19 June 2012 14:51 (eleven years ago) link