Saturday, June 19, 2004

fuck the suits - what do the artists think about filesharing?

via DNA Lounge:

In the middle of Sister Machine Gun's set at DNA lounge, the singer had this to say about filesharing of the band's music:

Everything we've played in this set up to this juncture, this crossroads, this... interlude... is released on Positron Records, which we own and operate, the representative of which [at the merch booth] will be happy to supply you with a fix in that regard, for a modest fee which will go toward letting us sleep in a hotel room instead of the van...

Everything after that juncture (that interlude) is released on Wax Trax Records. which means it's owned by -- actually it's not owned by TVT Records, it's owned by Credit Suisse. So technically speaking, the first four Sister Machine Gun albums are released on Credit Suisse, a Swiss bank, which is kind of cool when you think about it.

The point being, I don't get fuckin' paid for that shit, not a dime, not a single red cent. So you can go ahead and go home, and -- hey, you can download it right the fuck here, they got WiFi. Just get up on Morpheus or some fuckin' thing and get that shit for free.

All that crap you hear about musicians starving has almost nothing to do with all of the filesharing... when Napster was big, my CD collection sprang from a couple of dozen CDs to a couple of hundred CDs, almost all of which were bands I got turned onto by downloading songs - a good song would make me want to hear the rest of the band's music. All the fud being generated by the RIAA is to hide the fact that the reason artists aren't making money is that they only get about 35 cents from the sale of a $25 CD.

As my previous post shows, indie bands and labels are hip to the idea of putting out free music to attract new listeners. The world is changing, and the suits (and politicians) don't want it to, because it threatens their carefully manicured existence. The artists that embrace the new technologies are doing pretty good... not just musicians, even authors, like Cory Doctorow, who has made more money releasing his books for free than he did selling them. The new world is wired [ or wireless :) ] - what made people think the changes brought on by that wouldn't be as significant as the advent of radio (which record companies embraced as free advertising) or television (which the movie companies fought tooth and nail)?