Steve Albini on the surprisingly sturdy state of the music industry

in full

Steve Albini is the producer (he prefers the term recording engineer) behind several
thousand records. He is also a member of the band Shellac. In 1993, he published The
Problem with Music, an essay expounding his belief that the major label-dominated
industry of the time was inecient, exploited musicians and led to below par music. On
Saturday he gave the keynote address at Melbournes Face the Music conference in
which he celebrated the fact the internet had both dismantled this system and
addressed its inequalities:
Im going to first explain a few things about myself. Im 52 years old, I have been in
bands continuously, and active in the music scene in one way or another since about
1978. At the moment Im in a band, I also work as a recording engineer and I own a
recording studio in Chicago. In the past I have also been a fanzine writer, radio club
DJ, concert promoter and I ran a small record label. I was not terribly successful at
any of those things, but I have done them, so they qualify as part of my CV.
I work every day with music and with bands and I have for more than 30 years. Ive
made a couple thousand records for independent bands and rock stars, for big
labels and small ones. I made a record two days ago and Ill be making one on
Monday when I get o the plane. So I believe this puts me in a pretty good position
to evaluate the state of the music scene today, as it relates to how it used to be and
how it has been.

Were all here to talk about the state of the music scene and the health of the
music community. Ill start by saying that Im both satisfied and optimistic
about the state of the music scene. And I welcome the social and
technological changes that have influenced it. I hope my remarks today will
start a conversation and through that conversation we can invoke an
appreciation of how resilient the music community is, how supportive it can be
and how welcoming it should be.
I hear from some of my colleagues that these are rough times: that the internet has
cut the legs o the music scene and that pretty soon nobody will be making music
anymore because theres no money in it. Virtually every place where music is written
about, there is some version of this troubling perspective. People who used to make
a nice income from royalties, theyve seen the royalties dry up. And people who used
to make a living selling records are having trouble selling downloads as substitute for
records, and they no longer make records.
So there is a tacit assumption that this money, lost money, needs to be replaced and
a lot of energy has been spent arguing from where that money will come. Bitchiness
about this abounds, with everybody insisting that somebody else should be paying
him, but that he shouldnt have to pay for anybody else. I would like to see an end to
this dissatisfaction.
Its worthwhile to remember from where weve come. From where this bitchiness
originates. In the 1970s through the 1990s, the period in which I was most active in
bands in the music scene lets call this the pre-internet era. The music industry was
essentially the record industry, in that records and radio were the venues through
which people learned of music and principally experienced it. They were joined by
MTV and videos in the 80s and 90s, but the principle relationship people had with
music was as sound recordings. There was a booming band scene and all bands
aspired to getting recorded, as a mark of legitimacy.

But recording was a rare and expensive

enterprise, so it wasnt common. Even your
In the 70s and 80s most bands went
through their entire lifecycle without so
demo tape required considerable investment.
much as a note of their music recorded
So when I started playing in bands in the 70s
and 80s most bands went through their entire
lifecycle without so much as a note of their music ever being recorded.
Now Im going to describe the scene as I observed it in America, but I understand
that most of the structures and conditions I observed have parallels in other markets.
Maybe somebody from my generation can add the local Aussie colour to my
comments I prefer them shouted in as thick an accent as you can muster.
As a yardstick for the economics of the day or for the era, in 1979 you could buy a
45rpm single for a buck, a new album for $5, go see a club gig for $1 or a stadium
gig for $7. I know these things because I still have some old ticket stubs and price
stickers on my records. Note the relative parity between the live show costs and the
recorded music costs. A gradual inflation of prices remained under way through the
90s, making recorded music more expensive, though it remained the principal means
of experience.
The whole industry depended on these sales, and sales depended on exposure.
Bands on big labels toured, essentially to promote their recordings. And the labels
provided promotional and logistical support to keep the bands on the road. This
supported a network of agents and managers and roadies and promotional sta, so
the expense was considerable.
Retail outlets also oered special placements and promotion: displays, posters,
mentions in print ads, giveaways, trinkets and what were called end cap displays.
Record labels paid handsomely for these promotions and the stores used the sale of
these promotions as additional income. Chain stores especially relied on corporate
chain-wide promotions, regardless what the stores might think their local clientele
might like. It wasnt uncommon to see big displays of hair metal bands in urban
outlets where they couldnt sell a single stick but the labels had paid for their utility,
so up they went.
Radio stations were enormously influential. Radio was the only place to hear music
from any people and record companies paid dearly to influence them. Direct payola
had been made illegal but this was a trivial workaround. Record pluggers acting as
programming consultants were the middlemen. They paid radio stations for access
to their programmers and conducted meetings where new records were promoted.
These promotional oers were quite lucrative. But their metrics depended on radio

stations recording that they had added the records to their playlist. To satisfy this
requirement and keep the promotional money flowing, radio stations often played
tiny fragments of songs jumbled one after the other in any incomprehensible flow
during late-night programming hours, to satisfy the programming requirement that
they add songs to their playlist. Popular radio stations also staged mammoth
concerts, often for free or for nominal cover featuring bands that the labels were
promoting. These unpaid radio gigs were a drag on their touring income but the
promotional value was presumed to be worth it.

Promotional copies were immediately sold secondhand to record

stores. Photograph: Luke Macgregor/Reuters

Journalists and editors who could place reviews, program directors and independent
DJs who could add records to playlists or played in nightclubs, were subject to much
buttering up. Promotional trinkets and advance copies of records were sent their
way. Sometimes by the box. Presumably these were listening and file copies. But
they were actually a bribe. These promotional copies were immediately sold
secondhand to record stores and it was not uncommon for such stores to be
overstocked with a new release prior to its ocial release as a result. My wife worked
in a record store that bought records secondhand in the 90s. And their biggest
repeat customers, by a long shot, were the people on these label promo lists. The
sta at her store kept a tally for awhile and the editor of the local weeklies music
section made a comfortable second income amounting to a $1,000 or more a month
from selling these promo copies.
So it was a leaky system, riddled with ineciencies, but a lot of people made a living
through it. Record store owners, buyers, employees, ad agencies, designers, club
owners, label reps, A&R, producers, recording studios, publicists, lawyers,
journalists, program directors, distributors, tour managers, booking agents, band
managers, and all the ancillary services they required: banking, shipping, printing,
photography, travel agencies, limos, spandex wardrobe, cocaine dealers, prostitutes.
Because of this great bulk of the industry needed to sustain itself. Every facet of the
industry was tailored to this need.
The most significant bit of tailoring was an accounting trick called recouping costs.
The costs of making a record wasnt borne by the record label, except initially. Those
costs were recouped or taken out of the income the band might otherwise run as
royalties. The same was true of all those promo copies, posters, radio pluggers and
payola men, producers, publicists, tour support, 8x10 glossies, shipping, freight
basically anything that could be associated with a specific band or record was
ultimately paid for by the band, not by the record label.
As the label shifted from vinyl to CD as the dominant format, the labels could easily
sell the CD as a convenient, compact, trouble-free way to listen to music. The profit
margin exploded and the money got stupid. Retails costs of a CD was half again or
double more than an LP but the manufacturing, shipping and storage costs were a
tiny fraction. The labels even used vinyls legacy as a tool to increase this profit
margin by charging bands for unique packaging, despite the fact that CD packaging
was designed to be standardised. Or pre-emptively charging back for broken CDs at
a rate implying that someone was attacking the inventory with an axe.

If the label is paying you with someone

elses money, the label doesnt need to

In the end the bands operating under this

system earned very little from their record
sales, unless they were monumental stars.

care how much you charge

Often enough bands would conduct their entire

careers with a label and never reach the point
where they had suciently recouped to get paid anything at all. Now the label made
its per-piece profit on every record sold. And could recoup the cost of any records
unsold. And all those other people got paid using the money that would have
otherwise gone to the bands as royalties. Unsurprisingly, those other people also got
paid pretty well. It stands to reason that if the label is paying you with someone
elses money, the label doesnt need to care how much you charge.
During the 90s there was something of an arms race to see who could write the
biggest deal. That is, the deal with the most money being spent on the bands behalf.
In a singularly painless contest the money would either be paid to the band as a
royalty, which would take that money out of the system and put it into things like
houses and groceries and college educations. Or it could be paid to other operators
within the industry, increasing the clout and prestige of the person doing the
spending. Its as if your boss, instead of giving your paycheck to you, could pay that
money to his friends and business associates, invoking your name as he did. Since
his net cost was the same and his friends and associates could return the favour,
why would he ever want to let any of that money end up in your hands? It was a
system that ensured waste by rewarding the most profligate spendthrifts in a system
specifically engineered to waste the bands money.
Now bands existed outside that label spectrum. The working bands of the type Ive
always been in, and for those bands everything was always smaller and simpler.
Promotion was usually down to flyers posted on poles, occasional mentions on
college radio and fanzines. If you had booked a gig at a venue that didnt advertise,
then you faced a very real prospect of playing to an empty room. Local media didnt
take bands seriously until there was a national headline about them so you could
basically forget about press coverage. And commercial radio was absolutely locked
up by the payola-driven system of the pluggers and program directors.
International exposure was extraordinarily expensive. In order for your records to
make it into overseas hands you had to convince a distributor to export them. And
that was dicult with no means for anyone to hear the record and decide to buy it.
So you ended up shipping promotional copies overseas at a terrific expense, never
sure if they would be listened to or not.

John Peel: He listened religiously to every single record he

received in the mail, devoting hours of every day to the task.
Photograph: Eamonn McCabe/Redferns

The one exception to this was the brilliant BBC DJ John Peel. He listened religiously

to every single record he received in the mail, devoting hours of every day to the
task. I sent him a copy of the first album I ever made and not only did he play the
record on air, he sent me back a postcard with a personal remembrance of Chicago,
of visiting a matron aunt as a child in Evanston, the suburb where my post oce box
was kept. I treasured that note as the first indication that John Peel was a great man.
So these independent bands had to be resourceful. Theyd built their own
infrastructure of independent clubs, promoters, fanzines and DJs. They had their own
channels of promotion, including the beginnings of the internet culture that is so
prevalent today that being bulletin boards, and newsgroups. These independent
bands even made their own record label. Some were collectives and those that
werent were likely to operate on a profit-sharing basis that encouraged eciency,
rather than a recoupable patronage system that encouraged indulgence.
Thats where I cut my teeth, in that independent scene full of punks and noise freaks
and drag queens and experimental composers and jabbering street poets. You can
thank punk rock for all of that. Thats where most of us learned that it was possible to
make your own records, to conduct your own business and keep control of your own
career. If a bunch of pimply glue sniers could do it, we reasoned, then anybody
could.
The number of records released this way was incredible. Thousands of small
releases made their way into the mom and pop independent speciality stores,
which then provided a market for independent distribution. It was the beginnings of
an alternative to the label paradigm. It was cumbersome and slow but it was more
ecient than a shotgun approach with the big labels, whose answer to every
problem was to spend more of the bands money on it.
It was the beginning of what we would call the peer network. By mid-90s there were
independent labels and distributors moving millions of dollars of records and CDs.
And there was a healthy underground economy of bands making a reasonable
income owing to the superior eciencies of the independent methods. My band, as
an example, was returned 50% of the net profit on every title that we released
through our record label. I worked it out and that earned us a better per-piece royalty
than Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, Prince, Madonna or any other superstar
operating concurrently. And we were only one of thousands of such bands.
So, that was the system as it was. Thats what we lost when the internet made
everything available everywhere for free. And make no mistake about it, we have lost
it. There is still an independent label network but its a slim fraction of what it was.
The labels continuing to survive do so by supplying niche music to a discerning
audience. And because they have been steeled in the art of eciency their

constitution allows them to scale everything to suit the remaining demand.

You may have noticed that in my description of the mass market music scene and
the industry as it was pre-internet I made little mention of the audience or the bands.
Those two ends of the spectrum were hardly considered by the rest of the business.
Fans were expected to listen to the radio and buy records and bands were expected
to make records and tour to promote them. And that was about all the thought either
were given. But the audience was where all the money came from and the bands
were where all the music came from.
Through the internet, which more than anything
Music went from being rare, expensive
else creates access to things, limitless music
... to being free worldwide. What a
eventually became available for free. The big
fantastic development
record companies didnt see how to make
money from online distribution so they
eectively ignored it, leaving it to the hackers and the audience to populate a new
landscape of downloading. People who prefer the convenience of CDs over LPs
naturally prefer downloaded music even more. You could download it or stream it or
listen from YouTube or have your friends on message boards or acquaintances send
you zip files. In the blink of an eye music went from being rare, expensive and only
available through physical media in controlled outlets to being ubiquitous and free
worldwide. What a fantastic development.
Theres a lot of shade thrown by people in the music industry about how terrible the
free sharing of music is, how its the equivalent of theft, etc. Thats all bullshit and
well deal with that in a minute. But for a minute I want you to look at the experience
of music from a fans perspective, post-internet. Music that is hard to find was now
easy to find. Music to suit my specific tastes, as fucked up as they might be, was
now accessible by a few clicks or maybe posting a query on a message board. In
response I had more access to music than I had ever imagined. Curated by other
enthusiasts, keen to turn me on to the good stu; people, like me, who want other
people to hear the best music ever.
This audience-driven music distribution has other benefits. Long-forgotten music has
been given a second life. And bands whose music that was ahead of its time has
been allowed to reach a niche audience that the old mass distribution failed to find
for them, as one enthusiast turns on the next and this forgotten music finally gets it
due. Theres a terrific documentary about one such case, the Detroit band Death
whose sole album was released in a perfunctory edition in, I believe, 1975 and
disappeared until a copy of it was digitised and made public on the internet.
Gradually the band found an audience, their music got lovingly reissued, and the
band has resurrected, complete with tours playing to packed houses. And the band

are now being allowed the career that the old star system had denied them. There
are hundreds of such stories and there are speciality labels that do nothing but
reissue lost classics like that once they surface.
Now look at the conditions from a bands perspective, the conditions faced by a
band. In contrast to back in the day, recording equipment and technology has
simplified and become readily available. Computers now come pre-loaded with
enough software to make a decent demo recording and guitar stores sell
microphones and other equipment inexpensively that previously was only available at
a premium from arcane speciality sources. Essentially every band now has the
opportunity to make recordings.
And they can do things with those recordings. They can post them online in any
number of places: Bandcamp, YouTube, SoundCloud, their own websites. They can
link to them on message boards, Reddit, Instagram, Twitter and even in the comment
streams of other music. LOL, this sucks, much better, death to false metal,
LOL. Instead of spending a fortune on international phone calls trying to find
someone in each territory to listen to your music, every band on the planet now has
free, instant access to the world at its fingertips.
I cannot overstate how important a development that is. Previously, in the top-down
paradigm allowed local industry to dictate what music was available in isolated or
remote markets, markets isolated by location or language. It was inconceivable that
a smaller or independent band could have market penetration into, say, Greece or
Turkey, Japan or China, South America, Africa or the Balkans. Who would you ask to
handle your music? How would you find him? And how would you justify the
business and currency complications required to send four or five copies of a record
there?
Now those places are as well-served as New
Fans can find the music they like and
York and London. Fans can find the music they
develop direct relationships with the
like and develop direct relationships with the
bands
bands. It is absolutely possible Im sure it
happens every day that a kid in one of these
far-flung places can find a new favourite band, send that band a message, and that
singer of that band will read it and personally reply to it from his cell phone half a
world away. How much better is that? Ill tell you, its infinitely better than having a
relationship to a band limited to reading it on the back of the record jacket. If such a
thing were possible when I was a teenager Im certain I would have become a right
nuisance to the Ramones.
A couple of years ago my band mounted a tour of eastern Europe. We played all the

hot spots: the Czech Republic, Poland, Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Bulgaria, we
made it as far as Istanbul, Turkey. It was a magical experience, playing in front of
audiences who were relatively unjaded by the routine of touring bands and we were
welcomed like friends. We played to full houses at the same size venues as the rest
of Europe. The same sizes as we would play here in Australia. And the audiences
seem equivocally familiar with our music. The key dierence being that most of the
places have literally never sold a single record. Essentially 100% of our exposure had
been through informal means over the internet or hand-to-hand.

Steve Albini with his Shellac bandmates, Todd Trainer and Bob Weston

On that trip we established contacts with local promoters and arts organisations and
audiences developed an appetite for our music and we have since sold quite a few
records into the region. Our next tour through the region was easier as a result and
were going back to Istanbul this spring, using contacts made on that first
exploratory trip. I expect to have a marvellous time.
In short, the internet has made it much easier to conduct the day-to-day business of
being in a band and has increased the eciency. Everything from scheduling
rehearsals using online calendars, to booking tours by email, to selling merchandise
and records from online stores, down to raising the funds to make a record is a new
simplicity that bands of the pre-internet era would salivate over. The old system was
built by the industry to serve the players inside the industry. The new system where
music is shared informally and the bands have a direct relationship to the fans was
built by the bands and the fans in the manner of the old underground. It skips all the
intermediary steps.

Bands now have default control of their exposure. Its no longer necessary to pay
people to pay other people to play your records on the radio, only to have those
people lie about doing so. Its no longer necessary to spend money to let people
hear your band. It happens automatically.
Theres another, much subtler change that all this instigated. Since people no longer
have to make do listening to whatever is on the radio playlist and are no longer
limited to owning what the store decides to stock, they have become much more
indulgent in their tastes. My friends now normally listen to exotic playlists that they
have dreamed up themselves, full of counterintuitive and contrasting choices that are
uniquely theirs.
Our oce bearer has a hi-fi in that studio oce and is as likely to be playing the new
45 from the hardcore band Leather or electro drone by Tim Hecker as he is to be
playing a deep cut of Cincinnati soul or handbag disco or improv guitar noodlings,
whether newly released from Oren Ambarchi or 30 years old from the Takoma label.
People can now listen only to music they are ecstatic about, all the time.
There are active online communities for every kind of music and its subcultures.
Whether youre into Dustys Deep Cut reggae, minimal electronics, symphonic pop,
Texas blues, Japanese noise, power electronics, childrens music, christmas music,
Raymond Scott, or Burl Ives, I guarantee there is an online community where you can
connect with other enthusiasts to indulge the minute specificity of your tastes.
These online communities are now a vital part of the scene and this debate and
others are hashed out there daily. Ive probably unconsciously lifted some of my
positions in these remarks from discussions Ive had online so Id like to confess that
plagiarism now, as a way to encourage all of you to get involved in these forums
where all the interesting conversations about music is happening.
Imagine a great hall of fetishes where whatever you felt like fucking or being fucked
by, however often your tastes might change, no matter what hardware or harnesses
were required, you could open the gates and have at it on a comfy mattress at any
time of day. Thats what the internet has become for music fans. Plus bleacher seats
for a cheering section.
As a result fans are more ardent for this music. They are willing to spend more on
seeing it played live. They are willing to buy more ephemera and eager to establish a
personal relationship to the people who make the music. Gig prices have escalated
as a result. And the merchandise tables at gigs are universally teeming with activity.
Back home, gigs that used to cost five or six bucks are now 20 or 30. Over here the
ticket inflation has been more pronounced, with club gigs going for $80 or more. As a

result gig income for bands has increased exponentially. My band has been playing a
lot of the same places for the entirety of our existence, over 20 years now. I guess
you could say weve saturated our audience, no matter how long we stay at it. Some
of these perennial gigs are now paying an over of magnitude better than they were
10 or 15 years ago. Thats right, some places where we used to earn four or five
hundred dollars we now earn four or five grand.
This ease of access, redoubled interest and increase in income has created a new
partnership and possibilities between individuals, bands and visual artists, online
film-makers, choreographers and other kinds of public people. Collaborations take
place in real time or displaced over the internet where the parties often never meet
face-to-face. I have a dear friend who found himself with a bunch of time on his
hands last year so he formed a couple of new bands. One of these bands was
entirely populated by people he only knew online and all of their music was made by
online collaboration. This music was a pure result of the interconnectivity of the
internet.
All of that, all of those characteristics, all of those possibilities were instigated and
made possible by the online sharing of music. If not directly, as in the case of
building an audience for the band Death and my own band in the Balkans and
beyond, then indirectly by changing the expectations of the listeners and musicians.
This explains my enthusiasm for the way the music scene has changed, but what
about my optimism? I would like to address a platitude about the online exposure of
music. From all quarters we hear that, this is the platitude: We need to figure out
how to make internet distribution work for everyone. I use finger quotes to indicate
intellectual distance between myself and the quotation. I have a friend, Tim Midgett,
who uses three fingers for finger quotes to indicate extra irony. This is a two jobber.
I disagree with this rather inoensive platitude. Its innocuous and vapid and fills the
air after someone asks the question, How is the music scene these days? And it
maintains hope that the current state of aairs as mentioned, presumed to be tragic,
can be changed for the better. For everyone. That word everyone is important to
the people using the sentence. In their mind the physical distribution model worked
for everyone. But the new one does not. Not yet, not yet. Not until we figure it out.
Im sure were all going to get tired of me doing that [air quotes].

Inside that trite sentence, 'We need to

figure out how to make this work for
everyone,' hides the skeleton of a
monster

I disagree that the old way is better. And I do

not believe this sentence to be true: We need
to figure out how to make this digital
distribution work for everyone. I disagree with
it because within its mundane language are

tacit assumptions: the framework of an exploitative system that I have been at odds
with my whole creative life. Inside that trite sentence, We need to figure out how to
make this work for everyone, hides the skeleton of a monster.
Lets start at the beginning. We need to figure out: the subject of that sentence, the
first-person plural, sounds inclusive but the context defeats that presumption. Who
would have the power to implement a new distribution paradigm? Who would be in
the room when we discuss our plans for it? Who would do the out figuring we need
to do? Industry and consumers? Consumers is a likely response, but did the
consumers get a vote about how their music would be compressed or tagged or
copy protected or made volatile? Did anybody? Did the consumers get a choice
about whether or not Apple stuck a U2 album on their iTunes library? Of course not.
These things were just done and we had to deal with them as a state of being.
Consumers rebelling or complaining about things market pushback isnt the
same thing as being involved in the decision to do something. Clearly the we of
this sentence doesnt include the listener. I believe any attempt to organise the music
scene that ignores the listener is doomed.
How about the bands? Do the bands get a seat at the we table, while our figuringout needs are met? Of course not. If you ask bands what they want and I know this
because Im in a band and I deal with bands every day what they want is a chance
to expose their music and to have a shot at getting paid by their audience. I believe
the current operating status satisfies the first of these conditions exquisitely and the
latter at least as well as the old record label paradigm.
So who is this we? The administrative parts of the old record business, thats who.
The vertical labels who hold copyright on a lot of music. They want to do the figuring.
They want to set the agenda. And they want to do all the structural tinkering. The
bands, the audience, the people who make music and who pay for it they are
conspicuously not in the discussion.
How about the word need, we need to figure out? The need is actually a want,
a preference. These remnants of the music industry are unsatisfied with how the
internet, the bands and the audience can get along fine without them. So they prefer
to change things to re-establish relevance. You see this in the spate of 360 deals that
are being oered now, where everything a band does, from their music to their Tshirts to their Twitter accounts belong to the record label. In exchange the record
label oers startup money. I believe this approach is doomed by things like
Kickstarter, which have proven more eective and ecient at raising money directly
from the audience that wants to support the music.
How about the infinitive to figure out? We need to figure out. That presumes that

we can know how to attack a global distribution enterprise long after the internet has
crowdsourced an ecient and painless way to do precisely that. Theres a reason the
water faucet hasnt changed radically over the years. Time and trial have
demonstrated that the best and simplest way to control hot water is by turning a tap.
Problem solved, no further solving of the hot water faucet problem is required. I
cannot be the only one who is annoyed by the constantly misaligned proximity
faucets in public washrooms. Imagine if listening to music was as frustrating as that.
The next part of the sentence: make distribution work. This implies that we have
control over the distribution, that we can make it do some things but not others. The
internet proves this to be a fallacy. Once we release music its out of our control. I
use the verb release because its common vernacular. But I think its a perfect
description. Even more apt if you consider what happens when you release other
things, say a bird or a fart. When you release them theyre in the world and the world
will react and use them as it sees fit. The fart may wrinkle noses until it dissipates.
The bird may fly outside and crap on windshields; it may get shot down by a farmer.
Its been released, so you have no control over it. You cant recall the fart, however
much you would like to. You cant protect the bird.
Distribution is a problematic word. Its prior meaning implies scarcity and allocation of
physical products. You can inventory them, you could tax them, duty them, you
could search somebodys book bag for them. None of that is true with digital files. If
it were possible to return digital files to the strict control of the record labels (it is
impossible, dont worry), what would be their incentive to be honest in their
accounting? In the physical distribution model you could inventory the titles in the
warehouse during an audit and compare them with the delivery manifests from the
press manufacturing plant, and know with reasonable accuracy how many copies
had been sold. How on earth would you inventory a digital file? Count how many
were left on the shelf?
That word is problematic, but the most problematic word in the sentence is the word
work: we need to figure out how to make it work. Work is an impossible word in
this context. Depending on who uses it, it will have contradictory meanings. For a
label the system would work if it generated a profit per play, controlled access to
music while providing access to the audience for advertisers as an additional
income, and allowed the availability of push marketing for promotion. For the listener
it would mean open access, ability to find specific and niche music, continuous
playback, lack of nuisance, ease of use, freedom from spying, low or no cost, utility
on dierent devices, lack of push marketing and lack of advertising. For a band it
would mean finding an audience and having no barrier to participation, and no limits
on amount of material made available. You can see how this is problematic. It is

literally impossible for a system to satisfy all of these needs simultaneously when
they are contradictory.
And the hybrid approaches being tried are clumsy and insulting. I recently tried
streaming a podcast from an ocial licensed site. When the cats started fighting I
missed a little bit, having to separate the cats and then feed the cats and then
calmed them down. I came back to my computer and tried to replay the last few
minutes that I had missed but was greeted with a notice that due to copyright
agreements this player was not allowed to rewind the podcast. I find it unimaginable
that the people who posted the podcast wanted that provision enabled. And the site
just ensured that I would never bother with their product again.
The conclusion of that sentence, the for everyone is also problematic. I dont think
it is necessary or even preferable to have everyone involved in defining the
experience with music or more generally the relationship with the band and its
audience. We seem to accept that record stores, who were once the welcoming face
of the industry and the recipient of much promotional patronage described earlier,
are not coming along in the digital era. Record stores now get their appeal from
carrying secondhand records, something the industry used to have a regular shit fit
about. And by carrying speciality and niche material that is too marginal for corporate
attention, they are clearly not part of the everyone in the sentence.
So theres no reason to insist that other obsolete bureaux and oces of the lapsed
era be brought along into the new one. The music industry has shrunk. In shrinking it
has rung out the middle, leaving the bands and the audiences to work out their
relationship from the ends. I see this as both healthy and exciting. If weve learned
anything over the past 30 years its that left to its own devices bands and their
audiences can get along fine: the bands can figure out how to get their music out in
front of an audience and the audience will figure out how to reward them.
The internet has facilitated the most direct and
The internet has facilitated the most
ecient, compact relationship ever between
direct and ecient, compact relationship
band and audience. And I do not mourn the
ever between band and audience
loss of the oces of ineciencies that died in
the process. I suppose some people are out of
work. But the same things happened when the automobile replaced the horse, and
all the blacksmiths had to adapt, spending their time making garden gates rather
than horseshoes.
When I read over these notes on the plane today I felt like I spent too much time
enumerating complaints, and I dont want to conclude without reiterating how terrific
the current music environment is. I see more bands and I hear more music than ever

before in my life. There are more gigs, more songs available than ever before, bands
are being treated with more respect, and are more in control of their careers and
destinies. I see them continuing as a constellation of enterprises: some big, some
small most small but all of them with a more immediate response from their
audience and a greater chance to succeed. It is genuinely exciting.
Ive been talking an awful long time, but I have not yet mentioned the intellectual
property debate. Ill try to get that out of the way briefly now. I would like to leave
room for questions after I speak, and though Im leaving out a lot publishing, stolen
credits, sampling, fair use, inspiration I suspect there will be a healthy discussion
afterward and think that such discussions are necessary and overdue.
From my part, I believe the very concept of exclusive intellectual property with
respect to recorded music has come to a natural end, or something like an end.
Technology has brought to a head a need to embrace the meaning of the word
release, as in bird or fart. It is no longer possible to maintain control over digitised
material and I dont believe the public good is served by trying to.
There is great public good by letting creative material lapse into the public
ownership. The copyright law has been modified so extensively in the past decades
that now this essentially never happens, creating absurdities whenever copyright is
invoked. Theres a huge body of work that is not legally in the public domain, though
its rights holder, authors and creators have died or disappeared as businesses. And
this material, from a legal standpoint now removed from our culture nobody may
copy it or re-release it because its still subject to copyright.
Other absurdities abound: innocuous usage of music in the background of home
videos or student projects is technically an infringement and ocial obstacles are set
up to prevent it. If you want a video of your wedding reception your fathers first
dance with a new bride its o limits unless it is silent. If your little daughter does a
kooky dance to a Prince song dont bother putting it on YouTube for her
grandparents to see or a purple dwarf in assless chaps will put an injunction on you.
Did I oend the little guy? Fuck it. His music is poison.
Music has entered the environment as an atmospheric element, like the wind, and in
that capacity should not be subject to control and compensation. Well, not unless
the rights holders are willing to let me turn the tables on it. If you think my listening is
worth something, OK then, so do I. Play a Phil Collins song while Im grocery
shopping? Pay me $20. Def Leppard? Make it $100. Miley Cyrus? They dont print
money big enough.