“Victims we know so well”
Culture Club
‘Poor artists” rants like this one by DJ Shadow and Bono’s NY Times piece (that is equally oversimplistic and wrong about piracy and ISPs) get on my nerves, especially in times of a real economic crisis during which many people have lost their not-so-nice jobs and in which culture has gotten a bit more of a luxury good. I mean, imagine a QUELLE assembly line worker blogging stuff like “I take my job very seriously” as if that alone gave him a natural right to be paid. Of course it would be nice if people spent more money on decent music (instead of firework, Abwrackprämien-sponsored cars, computer games, etc.). Maybe the money people will save from not flying so much anymore now that the new OMGterrorpanicsafetymeasures make it so uncomfy will be spend on music. Anyways. Due respect to some of DJ Shadow’s past work but maybe people just don’t like his new stuff as much? How dare you blame them for not buying your music? Also if the world of the magic interweb moves too fast and in mysterious ways for you – ‘t’s not exactly your potential listener’s fault. Complaining about ‘them no buying’ doesn’t help. Somehow it s really bothers me how easy some artist are to blame vague entities like ‘the music listener’ or ‘the internet’ because they are just an anonymous mass of nobodies to them. At the same time most of them artists still shut up tightly about the record companies’ faults. It was the record companies who slept instead of finding a way to deal with new media and keep it interesting and fair on a value/price level for their customers. It was the record companies who were too greedy to invest/risk any of their money to give new exciting artist time and space to develop their skills and grow. Instead they put their money on short-term success, pressing talent into boring forms such creating one-season-bands/artists they spit out after a year or two with not the tiniest bit of feeling sorry. If anyone then it was the big record companies who taught the world how to treat artists with zero respect. The big record companies also did their part to widen the distribution gap between the small labels and themselves, making their existence even harder as before. etc. etc. [/oldschoolrantaboutrants]
(picture is from guardian.co.uk, found none for a worldwide statistic)
Anyways… Please artists, you wouldn’t really want people to buy your music because they feel guilty or out of pity, do you?! Stop acting as the victim or it might happen that people won’t even bother to download your music illegally anymore.
In a rather unrelated massacre fact randomness this is my favourite Culture Club song:
And as P.S. for those who escaped my facebook fancying of it: This footage of OWEN PALLETT covering OMD just with his violin, a delay/reverb thingy and his voice made my last night. His ‘Heartland’ album is my first favourite album of this young year.