Prefuse's SWIFT KICK IN THE PANTZ to U downloadin' BITERS

that'll show me!

that post makes me want to steal his wallet.

Prefuse 73 told me I needed to "watch my back next time I rolled up in Williamsburg".

I think this guy has some issues. Also, I NEVER would have heard his music were it not for downloading.

Also, watch your back next time you're rolling up in Williamsburg.

ooh, such a rough neighborhood that is.

Aren't you the one who created the "new album leak alert" thread?

Not at all, because, unlike Mr. Prefuse, Sleater-Kinney are actually not being jerks at all, are being understanding of the download vs. supporting the band situation i.e. not being black & white about it, and actually show some pre-thought was put into their statement.

Like somebody else said, downloaders are usually their most hardcore fans to begin with. Without it countless artists would never get their music exposed to the general public in the first place.

Talk about biting the hand that feeds you and licking the boot that kicks you.

http://www.smithandplant.com

leaving aside any question about whether the prefuse guy is right or wrong or a cock or a martyr, it doesn't seem like whining about it makes good economic sense in any case, if that's what he's really worried about.

they have the most to lose. digital formats + p2p networks has rendered the distribution chain close to pointless. the cost is tiny now. of course, they can spin themselves as providing marketing, booking, commercial licensing, and recording services. maybe even branding services. i mean, in the indie realm, a label really means something. and it has in the past as well. labels like def jux, kill rock stars, warp, etc have a wide, yet narrow blanket of what kind artist fits in. it's a voucher. "this track is good cause snoop dog says so."

but yeah, p2p really kills elements of the industry more than the artist itself.

or maybe not. who knows? "wait and see."
m.

http://riffcentral.blogspot.com/

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It's kind of like seeing a movie in a theater v. watching it on TV. If I miss the theatrical run of a David Lynch film I'm mad at myself, b/c I know I missed the immersive "total experience," all the great sound design and so on, even though I can get the plot (or lack thereof) from renting the DVD.

Hmm. I wouldn't want to overstate the novelty of the situation (duplication is not new ie. people made tapes of records for friends, people taped off the radio, etc before the dl brouhaha), but all the same I do feel that in going from the idea of acquiring an art object (a record, a total experience) to downloading some files that you keep on your hard drive until they bore you and you throw em away (ie. consuming music becomes more like acquiring a popsicle that's melting and less like acquiring a bust of Caesar that is a part of your home), the diminished materiality of the art goes hand in hand with the rhetoric that it's less of a something worth paying for. The more people that feel that way, the more ghostly the end results of the makingmusic-consuming music chain are, the less likely people are to feel that there are any significant costs involved. So I see the philosophy of it underwriting the finances of it. Obviously I am familiar with the whole "I downloaded a song, liked it, so I bought the album" experience. That is real and it does happen; hopefully often and I know it's happened in my case. But increasingly over the last few years when we play shows we meet kids who say "I love your music" and we ask them what albums of ours they have and they get sheepish and embarassed and just tell us "Oh, um, I don't know, I just have a bunch of mp3s". It's awesome that they like our stuff, but when I think of how much thought goes into creating a conceptually coherent album (of particular songs in a particular order with particular art and particular information) on our end and how utterly irrelevant it is to the way people are experiencing the sound on their end, it's pretty depressing. Sorry, I seem to keep returning to this on an art level rather than on a financial level. I can only imagine that if enough people who love our music feel content with having files they got off soulseek because their formative becoming-a-music-geek years in college were spent ripping and burning mp3s with friends, that can't be unusual and it can't be unrelated to the marketplace. But there's no point in being "opposed" to it. It's how things are now. It's like being tied to the tracks and saying "I am opposed to the train that's going to run me over". The train really doesn't give a shit.

All very true!

and as gloriously immersive as cinema experience can be, it's never been a perfect picture.

To balance my rather melancholic pronouncements, let me also say that part of what is fun about releasing music into the world is exactly that sense that you have lost control over how it's going to get used, where it will be played, how it will be trampled on or played too loud or used as a drink coaster or slapped onto a student film or made out to or violently mocked at a party etc. There is an "ideal listening situation" in the minds of people who make the records, but it's pretty much a fantasy. Of course you can be moved and connect with art you're hearing on crappy speakers in mono with the "Loudness" button set too high etc. Yes the "golden age of the album" is a (rockist?) ideological construction. etc etc etc

that said . . . and on another point

Sometimes bad listening conditions are the best ever . . .
I had a great van drive listening to Van Halen where we could only hear the left channel- so there was no David Lee Roth and barely any Eddie! I'm sure it's not the experience that Van Halen intended for me to have- but it was really amazing and fun.

Hearing something on an mp3 is way better than never hearing it at all, and as a way to share an archive of odds and sods, it's a fantastic thing- sites like UBUWEB are pretty incredible, and yeah maybe if I was at the Dia center or the lIbrary of congress I could acquire some of those recordings, but now thanks to the web and mp3 sharing/playing/downloading, I can hear La Monte Young noise performances and radio interviews with Lacan etc etc. Ditto for the amazing "American Memory" website of folk recordings. So there are some big positives to the culture of downloading.

not at all: as a purchaser/downloader, it's fascinating to hear an artist's POV.

but i really want to know more about how it affects you financially. i understand you're not dependent solely on income from your music, but even so: artistic considerations aside, how do you feel about the fact a (growing) proportion of your fanbase isn't paying a penny to hear your music? put simply: what implications do you think this will have for your work in the future?

As mercenary and business-speak as this sounds, I think artists have to look at their recorded output as just a part of their overall project (if they're thinking of it in financial terms at all). I would say in this era, an "album" is a several headed beast - and as much a marketing tool as a primary revenue generator. Frankly, artists really have to think about customer acquisition, lifetime value, and various ways of monetizing their fanbase. I know all of this sounds evil and maybe it is, but in this discussion it's important.

Yeah on iTunes there seems to be some duration based cut-off point too- if a jazz track is 20 minutes long then you can't get it for a dollar, you have to spring for the album- I'm not sure what the duration is though as I did get some 9 minute epics for a buck.
"Faust Tapes" is a good example of something that is best approached as "all-or-nothing" if you're really going to "get" it, ie. you would have a very skewed picture of what that album was like if you just excerpted any one section from it- the composition *is* the total statement, I reckon. (Though the popsicle lover in me has favorite parts)

SCOTT HERREN: ..."

hahaha

Pitchfork: I've got a million questions for your million projects.

Scott Herren: Hang on. Simon, what am I allowed to talk about?

Simon [from Warp]: The Prefuse 73 album. And then the Books EP. What else did he want to know about?

Pitchfork: I want to ask about a collaboration I've heard you've done with Sa-Ra Creative Partners.

Herren: Okay, I can't talk about the Piano Overlord project. I'll just break down what it is in the context of Prefuse work.

...

ONLY DO WHAT SIMON SAYS!!

You know, I didn't actually HATE the guy per se but my god if he pats himself any harder on the back he'll wrench his arms out of his sockets.

I'm with Donut here.

REALLY FUCKIN' DEEP, DUDE.

Herren: True.

AUGH.

I always thought that was a joke referrence to Gil Scott-Heron. Is it?

yeah, we game emusic with this same situation... they don't have controls in their system yet to purchase a whole album. it's all X songs per $Y monthly fee. so your standard hardcore band cd with 25-40 songs at one to two minutes each is gonna cost you WAY more than some rad jazz record that's got 2 tracks at thirty minutes each. both the atavistic it's unheard music series labels are full of these... etc etc. it's cool, but uncool. i'd love a compromise on a case by case basis. buy the cool hardcore record for 10 or 15 instead of 40 and buy the jazz record for 10 or 15... just the same.

there are guys with huge lists of all the one track full length albums... evidentally there are quite a few. it's just such a hilarious reason to buy a record tho. it seems autistic or something. "i only buy cds with 5 tracks." in this case, the game is one.
m.