Like I needed one. Thanks for this update Kevin. I hope we can garner a class action suit against her. I'd go out and buy it today and crash one of my computers if it would help. The more I think the music industry heavies can't get any stupider, the more I am proved wrong. Don't get me started. I am married to someone who has dealt with this corrupt industry all his life at many levels, me by his side. Signed to MCA for many years, I could scan and link to original contracts that would make you puke. Goes like this: We parade you around the world, work you like mules, and we give you nothing but notariety in return. What, you think you deserve more? What publishing? Oh that's nothing. Don't worry your head over that. You're artists. We'll take care of the business.
The recording industry today is nothing short of a pyramid scheme. And the few who reap the financial rewards at the top must defeat anything that threatens that structure (i.e. the net). To spread the control around the middle and bottom of that structure would mean the destruction of an entire industry as it was built. And I would love to be there to see it come crashing down.
My husband and I work our business within a corrupt industry the best we can. We were pro-napster people, seeing it as an incredible tool, a digital library at our fingertips--what was that chord change? How did that section go? Ah. Would have paid for it too.
As for the hubub over giving music away, I see nothing wrong with throwing a few tunes from a CD online for download, free. You like my work, you'll buy. If you want to put those two or three tunes on your own CD with two or three from another artist, and another, why should I as an artist, label, or record company care? It's the best promotional gimick going.
And how is it any different from what Amazon does with books? You can get up to 20 sample pages for some books, free for the reading, you like it go ahead and order it. If not, go read pieces from another book. How is that so different? Because it doesn't open in acrobat and let you save it to your hard drive? You could do screen clips if you wanted to. But you don't want to. If you like the work, you're going to BUY it. You want to see the jacket, you want it in your collection, on your bookshelf. You want to refer to it in its entirety from time to time.
Here's an out there idea for the taking--you heard it here first. Fill the dead air between tunes with value-add stuff (interviews with artists, outakes from studio sessions, cooking with Bono in his kitchen--conversations, humor, political statements, whatever). Give away 2-4 tunes free for downloading. The real macoy CD has all the tracks plus this new between track shit that makes it worth buying the disc.
this betwen track stuff becomes the meme. Right? Has anyone but me heard the Buddy Rich on the Bus bootleg that's been floating around for years? Buddy ranting at his band day and night, with explatives even RageBoy hasn't uttered yet? Or the Ray Charles gig where the drunk guy comes off on stage and Ray spends a good two minutes trying to get someone to "take the man off the stage."
This is the stuff that could make CDs more than 11 separate tracks joined together by silence. And something that could bolster the worth of any compilation. And how about we get really cool (my husband has no idea I'm saying this shit), and we have more than one version of that stuff between air--Hey man, did you get the one with Sting swearing at his dog or the one with him talking on the phone?
Hell, I don't know. I'm on a rant today. Tell me I'm insane and I'll shut up. Or I probably won't.
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