yea, the smaller run special edition stuff seems to be the best route for physical releases. but then the question becomes is it worth it for the artist? i mean it can't be too motivating when you're looking at a situation where the majority are going to download your record for free and hopefully enough people buy the limited fancy packaged deluxe album to recoup production costs AND make enough for the artists to eat, live and make another record!

something definitely needs to happen to spark a renaissance in the appreciation of aesthetic form and it needs to happen in a powerful way to shift our culture's extremely warped perception of value.

cool about the http://holysons.bandcamp.com/ page. loving the recent mixes and the call of the wild stuff from soundcloud. i think a whole album with some bonus tracks for those who pay 10 bucks or more is a solid idea.

Concept:

As artists, accept the notion that — in general — your work is better when you work for it, not the other way around. The problem is an insistence on ownership of the ideas produced, in essence making it about you, not the work. Most artists had day jobs before they committed to the notion that their art should feed them. I'm not saying that artistic talents/ideas are worthless, I actually think it's the most valuable thing — good art/music, etc. — but ultimate value doesn't always result in acquisition of money or goods for exchange.

Insistence on owning one's ideas necessitates limiting who has access to those ideas. If the goal of making arts is communicating ideas through that art, then insisting on owning the idea is in direct opposition to the actual goal. Thus insisting on being paid for making that art is by extension in direct opposition to the actual goal. Ownership, and by extension licensing that ownership, is the shady side deal that talentless (outside of dealmaking) dude with an overcoat full of watches makes with artists to allow him to make money off the art too. If the goal is to make money, good luck to you, but I would argue that few people get into devoting time to creative pursuits merely to make money.

If you really want to foment the slow revolution, the only RIGHT kind of revolution, make art, give it away anonymously, and don't worry about what happens to it. Paint a picture, don't sign it, install it late at night, unseen by others, in a public space in a way that isn't destructive to the space it's hung in, e.g. on cardboard hung with rubber cement, and leave. Then don't be upset when it's gone. It went into the ether, and the people who saw it, and the way it was presented aren't affected by you, or the way you look, or anything attached to you. They just experience the work on its own terms, the ideas on their own terms. Maybe it offends them. Maybe it inspires them. Maybe it doesn't affect them at all. Maybe they don't even notice it. It's like throwing paint at a wall, some of it will stick, and some won't. You do it and you hope that eventually there's a critical mass of that type of behavior.

Now how do you do that with music?

All this said, I have no problem with the notion of paying for a physical good, and I generally WILL buy a record/book/print that I know is good, and that is interesting in its physical form. But I don't buy it to "support the artist" as much as I buy it because I want something nice to hold in my hands and look at while I'm listening to the music it contains, or want something nice to sit on my bookshelf, or hang on my wall. Most of the time, I prefer to buy physical copies from the artist when I see them on tour, mainly because I suspect that doing so has an effect on whether the artist gets to eat on the road. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I would guess that on tour you've already paid for the records, etc. at the merch table, so the money I drop there is conceivably going into your bellies/gas tanks, assuming you're not selling it all for cost.

But what the fuck do I know? I'm just a critical thinker. I'm not really making anything.

so, not to ignore the visual arts necessarily, as i do sense that these “industries” are facing equally dark futures due to some very similar structural issues, but in an effort to clear up a couple of burning questions regarding the plight of the “professional musician” i was wondering what any of you thought about there being some need to redefine the role of the “music label”? because it seems to me that what labels are really doing these days, (and not always because they mean to, or because they even realize what theyre doing, although sometimes theyre evil and they do) but it seems like they have the undesirable effect of building unnecessary walls between the musician/band and his/her/their audience, by gathering together a grouping of bands which they believe are “similar enough” to market to one large target “consumer group”. is there any good reason to allow labels to completely take over the task of reaching out to people with marketing tools in order to turn artists into entertainers for the purposes of making money? when did art/music become synonymous with entertainment and allow its goals to be diverted in order to favor the goals of an industry? doesn’t the internet give musicians an opportunity to be more in control of the distribution of their sounds and ideas in a more immediately rewarding way both aesthetically and financially by offering a virtual venue in which to build interest in their work? do the bands you are in or know well see any increase in interest and/or revenue when they create and maintain websites and forums (such as this one, and holy sons new site)? is it just that musicians are lazy or can’t be bothered to connect with people more directly? or maybe they dont realize what an incredible tool the internet is? i don’t necessarily think that labels are totally worthless or anything that dramatic, but maybe they shouldn’t have quite so much control over who gets heard when and where and by whom....(of course this question is equally applicable to the institute of the “curator” in the visual arts, but im especially curious about the way that other musicians regard the work that labels do for them)...