Louis said everything I was going to say (and better) in my response to Tristan.
The only thing that I would add is that dealing with selling your stuff digitally is a different process than pressing up vinyl and it's much less personal and fulfilling as a label owner/artist. The collaborative effort is pretty much out the window. Not to say that there aren't some great folks working at digital download sites. It's simply not as much fun. And I'm not sure what you were saying about administrative costs T. Depending on whether you do your own mastering or not, there are none. But managing digital content and dealing with sites takes time. And regarding that, refer back to my last paragraph. I find it quite a pain in the ass. If the money were better I might change my tune. But it's not good enough for me to at this point and considering how entrenched iPods and the digital market is at this point, I wonder how much more things could improve. And a last important point is that digital has the tendency to invalidate the notion of an EP or LP, ie narrative, ie a more complex listening experience. That sucks. It really is not a nice feeling that music consumers can and usually do ignore whatever you (the artist, the label) were trying to communicate. It's great some digital buyers pick up whole releases. And I also understand it's nice to just buy the one or two tracks that you deem worthwhile and skip the ones you think aren't. But almost nothing about digital is actually better for art itself; it's all access, convenience, individual imperative. And in fact it makes the art more homogenized, not in terms of content but just about everything else, and disposable. So yeah. I don't really like it and I can sure understand why guys like KDJ haven't jumped into it yet. I'm actually working on a digital relaunch of the dL catalog like, right now. And I'm working on a few new vinyl releases. Bye. JT On Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 10:47 PM, louis haiman <[email protected]> wrote: > From someone that has no inclination to get into the vinyl game, yet I have > TONS of respect for those in their unwavering support of vinyl... > Having your work on vinyl is incredibly special. > Ask a painter. Ask a stage actor. Ask any craftsperson. You'll find many > common sentiments that answer the vinyl question. It's a purely emotional > thing. Again, I don't do vinyl, would love to, but... > All I can say is, think about how incredibly awesome it is when you stand in > front of an original, awesome work of art. A human being labored over that > canvas, slab of stone, etc. I think vinyl provides that same kind of > connectedness. > As for alternative/ dominant formats like MP3s, even CDS, (formats that I > deal in)...it can be a little mindless and you need to be careful where your > music ends up. It takes NOTHING to post MP3 files to a server, website, > social network. > Again, it's purely an emotional thing. Music is a craft and vinyl honors it > best. Many artists would feel comfortable in saying that their art is not > for everyone, not to alienate anyone, but out of self awareness. > PEACE. OUT. > Louis > >> Date: Tue, 17 Mar 2009 19:34:26 +0000 >> From: [email protected] >> To: [email protected] >> CC: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] >> Subject: Re: (313) mysticism in electronic music (and where has it gone) >> >> On 17/03/2009 14:08, JT Stewart wrote: >>> If it's recorded then there is a medium, and vinyl is hardly an >>> out-of-reach medium. So there is an available audience. But to humor >>> your question, YES. Artists do not do what they do for the sake of the >>> audience. Most of them anyway. Alienating the audience is not a >>> concern. If the artists stops making their art in a way that is >>> fulfilling for them...what happens? Don't you think that's pretty >>> important? >>> >> Absolutely it is, but I'm struggling to understand what's unfulfilling >> about providing music in an additional format - especially if there's >> less risk than there is through the other mediums already out there. Is >> it that the package itself is 100% essential? Is it a desire to enforce >> audiophilia by suppressing compressed formats? Is it that the >> administrative overhead of distributing mp3s is so high? Re: this last >> point JT, I'm very surprised by this - can you elaborate at all? Or is >> it some combination of all of this? I'm not trying to say any of these >> reasons are invalid I just don't understand why adding a format would >> somehow ruin the whole endeavour for somone unless the core impulse is >> to force everyone else to share their values about music formats. >> >> And if alienating an audience is not a concern then why mass produce >> something at all? >> >> Playing devil's advocate to some extent, but part of me really doesn't >> geddit. >> >> Tristan > > ________________________________ > Express your personality in color! Preview and select themes for Hotmail®. > See how.
