On 18/03/2009 03:30, JT Stewart wrote:
Louis said everything I was going to say (and better) in my response
to Tristan.
Yeah, I do understand those reasons as an artist, but the more we're
talking about this the more I'm wondering if these aren't purely the
concerns of the artist rather than the label - meaning: artist-run
labels are the ones that would be less likely to distribute digitally.
Put another way, I reckon this discussion is really about the
relationship between the label and the consumer rather than the artist
and the listener, if you see what I mean? In cases where the artist is
the label, this gets much murkier. Perhaps a bit simplistically, or
maybe just wrongly, I've always thought that it was the label's job to
provide me with the output of the artists that they represent - thus my
confusion about some of them not wanting to sell stuff to me.
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.
Right. Well there's one confusion resolved, as I had assumed none of
this label stuff was particularly 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.
I think this bit may have been a miscommunication. I thought you said
something about digital distribution being expensive towards the
beginning of this discussion - I must have misunderstood that. Nothing
to see here. Tumbleweed, etc.
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.
I hear you. I remember reading similar in an interview with one of the
guys from Autechre a while back as well. Personally, I feel like I've
heard lots of narratives that really disappoint though, and cost an
awful lot more due to accommodating more tracks. As a listener these
days, I'm more interested in a couple of tracks that stand out, because
more often than not, the tracks that complete the narrative don't stand up.
I'm not sure this is really about convenience either. It's about
enjoying as much good music as my budget will allow, and I definitely
feel like I'm getting more of what I want for less this way. That said,
I love it when an album or an EP creates that narrative and I always buy
it all if I feel like that's something that I'll get out of it.
I guess the key thing is that ultimately I don't care about whether or
not the artist has a nice feeling about my purchasing or listening
experience. That's a bit ruthless perhaps, but you could also argue that
holding someone ransom to purchasing an entire release for one or two
quality tracks is ruthless as well. Commerce is ruthless I suppose.
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.
Hmm... I can't say that I agree about this. If the pleasure of listening
is obscured by the burden of encoding vinyl to a digital format that is
more suitable to a lifetime spent commuting, then digital can be better
for art. It means that more of the listener's time is spent actually
listening. I know Thor has just said he spends more time browsing, but
this isn't my experience of it at all. If I only listened to vinyl on
turntables I wouldn't listen to much music at all. In fact, I probably
see more of the cover art while listening digitally than I would with wax.
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.
Well that's good news!
T
