so here's a podcast with "greg saucier" (lol, it's his instagram) where he discusses corporate takeover of music in light of bandcamp developments. with a writer i don't know but maybe you do

https://www.levernews.com/lever-time...from-bandcamp/

if like me you have no patience for the spoken word (lol) here is the transcript:

https://share.transistor.fm/s/0bbbab07/transcript

Thank you.

We're gonna die.

Moves so slowly
Grows so smoothly
Takes so neatly
It's as if they belong
And they've been here all along

Grows so smoothly
Moves so slowly
Takes completely
It's as if they belong
And they've been here all along

This one's ours
Let's take another
This one's ours
Let's take another
This one's ours
Let's take another
This one's ours
Let's take another

Check the math here
Check in ten years
Clusterfuck theory
Buy them up and shut them down
Then repeat in every town

Every town will be the same

It looks like we can at least count on a Bandcamp Friday this November 3:

https://isitbandcampfriday.com/

yeah

and i'm one of the murderers. just confessing my crime.

i don't do it on purpose, but my seminomadic lifestyle makes me averse to gathering possessions.

when i was younger i didn't have money to buy a lot of records. we traded cassettes, which tended to die frequently. also there was radio and some radio was good (not anymore).

but then i had to go and left my records behind. who has them now? no idea.

years passed, cds happened, pain in the ass boxes, limiting. but then we had napster! and napster had it all. just crap quality. but you could listen to anything you could think of. and piracy exploded because above all it seems that people want access.

now i get more music than i can shake a stick at, all legal, in high res lossless quality, some of it now remixed for dolby atmos even, playing out of a pocket thing. and a dedicated classical music app. no shit.

i... really like having access. i like paying for it. i like that i can even control the thing from my wrist. i'm a horrible man, i know, buying access and convenience like a mindless drone. i jack it into the car too and vroom. road trip.

but i really like convenience snd don't want to have to carry around and manage possessions.

even my books, my original true passion since age... ooof.., 3, no joke, i used to travel with suitcases filled eith books, i used to send boxes on cargo ships, i used to mail them on m bags at library rates.

now...? i don't care to collect as "objects" anymore, and i buy kindle versions of stuff i already own so that i can read them. because yeah, i can take them all with me anywhere on a tablet. which has its own light.

"sad," i guess, but that is my life today. i wouldn't want to be stuck where my books and records and "cds" (haha cds) live today (stored, in crates, on shelves, in forgotten rooms).

and if i don't want physical clutter--why would i want to buy files? i have files that are 100% forgotten on some dead hard drive. i would gladly pay NOT to have files. files need storage. management. updating/transcoding, fucking headache, i don't have a secretary or a clerical department. i'll pay someone to do it.

i love books, but i have always loved libraries the best. they keep more books than i can ever own.

so i also prefer musical libraries too. and i guess most other people do too ("streaming is the model" sez greg. or something to that effect.)

i don't mind paying for a library subscription. they do all the filing.

so for musicians i think it's self-defeating to look for solutions in "what was." it used to be this way, it used to be that way... sure, it was, but that is not where we are now. i would love to have jazz 90 back in udc but that was 3 lifetimes ago. the thing is now a cspan (blech, but it fits the town).

anyway, we're now in the land of total access, and with total access come massive network effects. deerhoof has to work hard to eke out a working class living, while taylor swift is like, officislly a billionaire or something (can't be avoided. she gets mentioned like 10x a day on bloomberg. they have something called "the taylor swift effect" on the economy. i shit you not. like metalocalypse but lame)

oh, and what ever happened to tidal? damn... that was a kind of well-funded co-op, i think. artist-owners and what not.

anyway, i have no solutions. sorry. just trying to lay out the problem as it is. as a contributor i mean.

It's not where you are now. And I admit it: it's not where millions and millions, the majority, are/is now. But that doesn't erase the rest of us - it's not like we're going from town to town hunting for original Polaroid instant film. New product IS there: hundreds of thousands (millions?) of artists, of all generations, getting their art (OK, I'm stretching the terms "artist" and "art", but you know what I mean) pressed on vinyl, captured on tape, digitized to CDs (yeah dude, CDs, we dig 'em :)), AND the demand is there as well - why do you think some records, even those not pressed in ultra-limited quantities, fly off the shelves and later reach degenerate prices on Discogs and eBay.

My take on your post is that you took two cases, the one for accepting/digging (even surrendering to) the mainstream technology, and the one for decluttering, and as eloquent as your writing usually is you mixed 'em up. The fact that your personal preference for a, um, decluttered life (a preference shared by tons, I'll give you that, and more power to ya) aligns with today's preeminent way of distributing audio and audiovisual content doesn't mean we've reached the end of history. (Francis keeps moving the goalpost. :D) And we're not even touching the issue of environmental impact - the "cloud" is obviously no cloud, it's billions of solid computers sucking up power in Norway and Iceland...

Elliott Sharp covers Dylan's "Masters Of War", a great song that unfortunately does not get old. Mr. E# says:


Recorded in response to the recent events in Israel and Gaza: the barbaric attack by Hamas on innocent civilians and the brutal and disproportionate response by the Israeli military resulting in the deaths of nearly 4000 children in Gaza not to mention thousands of other Palestinian civilians as of this day.

Any proceeds from this track will be donated to the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund.
www.pcrf.net

(or please donate yourself directly)


https://elliottsharp1.bandcamp.com/track/masters-of-war

From Hyperdub: "[this] bandcamp friday all label proceeds go to Medicine For Palestine".

https://hyperdub.bandcamp.com/

no, i'm not trying to erase collectors, a special breed of people, who unfortunately seem to be the only ones reliably feeding non-hit musicians these days, when there should be other revenue streams (greg proposed government support... )

what i wrote was not a question of "me", the "me" was just a device to look at what is going on in the market. i was just looking at the market forces, and the capacity of musicians to make a living in the market, and i described my part in that market, in which i'm buying from the big capitalists because they really sell me what i really want: ubiquitous universal access (but be careful what you wish for...).

the collector reselling at astronomical markups is also a capitalist, just a small one, and closer to the musicians, but unfortunately i have zero use for their product. and i would venture most of the market is like that. collectors are a special breed. not everybody is one, but we all know some.

but anyway my intended focus really was on the ability of musicians to make a living under current conditions.

however, another thing to consider in such economy is that the public preference for the disembodied lifestyle might be an adaptation to having no security, no fixed home, and perhaps even no body (since everything is reduced to data now, what is a body?). this has been decades in the making now, and perhaps those not affected yet can sense it in the air anyway.

personally, i chose this nomadic lifestyle. i like it. it's genetic. my paternal line is scattered all over the world, while my maternal line is all clustered in one city--it's hilarious for me to see this. so i take after my father's family and just pick up stakes and go. anyway, mine is a choice of sorts (i did not choose my genes, but my genes get their choice).

however: not me: millions of people have no choice and are forced into dislocation by disasters like job destruction, financial stress, and private equity buying up the neighborhood. and war of course. maybe they would even like to be collectors, but just can't.

so those choiceless people are no different than the musician dislocated from markets and from the ability to make a living at their craft. which for me is the big question here. (i am actually more worried about the millions of people with insecure lives, but this thread was about bandcamp)

can collectors alone enable musicians to make a living? maybe, i don't know really, i think probably not. i'm sure they help, just not sure how much. so it seems musicians need another business model, beyond just relying on support from collectors, because streaming is the new model but the new model is clearly not enough.

i am not worried about the fate of collectors themselves. i honestly think they will be fine. they have money to spend in their delicious vice, and will get their product one way or another. but i am actually worried about the musicians who depend on those collector dollars. and i'm trying to figure out what's happening so that i can figure out what can be done. not that i will solve this problem, but i enjoy the attempt in itself. looking for choices when there are none left. because what else.

anyway, speaking of disasters and homelessness and war, i'll stop blocking the gaza relief ads which are more important than my ramblings about economics.

so here now reissued:

================


================



=================

All (well, most) Linda Smith and Sleater-Kinney albums are available for a name-your-price this Bandcamp Friday. Seven hours left!

I do like to think I'll get my shit one way or another, but in my case you got the money part wrong - I'm broke as all that is fuck! I'm not kidding one bit; I live on Coca-Cola and cereal. (By the way, can anybody help me get the Obscure box set before it flies off the shelves? Any and all contributions are welcome. Drop me a line and I'll send you my PayPal address... :D)

that's the fate of all collectors. you have money, but just spend it on records, lol. doesn't matter how much. same as erasmus, who said something like "when i get a little money, i buy books. if there's any left i buy flood and clothes."

anyway, have you ever read walter benjamin on book collecting? i think you'll relate hahahhaa. look for one of his texts, "unpacking my library." it's a short read, but too much good stuff to quote, and works best in non-soundbite form. not sure if you read german (i don't) but if you could find the 1931 original text... i unfortunately have to rely on eengleesh translations.

Not related to Bandcamp, but to our "collecting" discush:

‘No one else is saving it’: the fight to protect a historic music collection

Look at Andy Rourke checking out those amazing, beautiful Smiths sleeves... Awesome!

There’s quite an interesting avant/psych scene growing in Tbilisi, Georgia. Not much reaches western listeners from there but these two bands are worth checking out:

https://georginabeastly.bandcamp.com/

https://grb3.bandcamp.com/

Opinion by Damon & Naomi/Galaxie 500's Damon Krukowski in The Guardian:

Spotify made £56m profit, but has decided not to pay smaller artists like me. We need you to make some noise

What its Wrapped campaign doesn’t say is that indie musicians and labels are treated terribly, and deserve a better deal

yeah, it's an idealistic pursuit. of the various board members mentioned, most are dead and the rest is on the verge. hopefully a university will take him on... maybe keef gave the million bucks?

I wonder if this means no more Bandcamp Fridays or "we'll let you know when the next Bandcamp Friday is". :confused:

totally unrelated to bandcamp, but it's an interesting article and I never realized that this was an issue:


The Fight Between Musicians and Venues Over Merch Profits Is a Big Deal With a Simple Solution

that reminds me of michel foucault's support for the iranian revolution lololol. he had a big surprise with the results

but anyway yes, what to build after the deluge is the real question

about that piece though: the final thesis about the wisdom of antiquated systems is wrongheaded. it was not a "wisdom," it was whatever ecosystem developed after things were negotiated by many participants for a very long time. it still had many fuckups and abuses and all sorts of problems

and we have lived in the age of mechanically reproduced art for a long time. walter benjamin already dealt with that issue a century ago:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wo...Reproduct ion

digital increased reproducibility and diluted the aura an extra step. this caused new developments clearly

but anyway what people have been buying and selling in those sites is not music anymore, but auras. because after their technological obsolescence, the mechanical reproductions had acquired auras of their own, became basically just auras, to be kept in their wrappers/altars/whatever

benjamin might have been surprised at this development, but likely not too much. he collected books after all, which were mechanically reproduced objects themselves. funny how all this reeks of plato...

it also reminds me of hesse and steppenwolf and the radio, hahhahahahaaa. snobby steppenwolf could only attend live music performances of cultured music. i think he liked schubert? i can't remember exactly. but post-orgy steppenwolf could enjoy jazz on the radio no problem (almost) hahahaha

but anyway, how to make a living when music has been commoditized and only the artist's aura has economic value, and too many hands want a piece of it?

the problem must be analyzed and diagnosed correctly to come up with a proper solution though. technologies (not just one, lol) are changing things forever

but calling things for what they actually are is a start

and don't be afraid to get weird with thought and run with it though, because otherwise you're stuck in what already didn't work

I'D LIKE TO BUY AN AURA FOR $5
$50
$10
$45
$15
$40
$20
$40
$20
$35
$25
$35
$27.99
okay $27.99 we have achieved wisdom for today

one of these recent interviews cat power says she's not too enamored of the whiteboy dominated indie rock world, and prefers the world of fashion

i think her aura made big bucks in fashion, i think. lagerfeld? something

perfume?

i'd like to buy an aura for $25
$200
$40
$165
$45...
and so forth

ps- isn't it funny how st. taylor swift returned to spotify only to become the sheriff of nottingham? haaaahaaaahaaaaaaaahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa haaaaaaaaaaaahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahaaaaaaaaa

a reminder for the children who were born afterwards: https://time.com/3554468/why-taylor-swift-spotify/
https://www.theguardian.com/music/20...s-spotify-spat

and now with spotify she steals from the poor to give to herself haaaaaaaahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

as george carlin used to say, "it's all bullshit, folks"

see it was not as terrible as that writer made it hahahahahaaaaa

when i was writing my post before having imaginary auctions prompted by unconscious divinations i realized that often the humanities types who write about these things know nothing about markets, commerce, or what it takes to make things run. as if just wishing something could make it come true, no scarcity, no limit on resources nor alternative uses for them

walter benjamin however knew a bit about auctions hahahahah

anyway, best wishes with your vice

The motherfreakin' motherlode!



From Joyful Noise Recordings:

Continuing the physical vs virtual discussion. From Robert Christgau's newletter (bolding is mine):

"disoriented by its lack of materiality": what is "materiality"? (a big fucking dick xD)

to me, in the case of recorded music, the speaker ends up being the most "material" (materially dense?) element of the delivery chain. it's what makes the air vibrate, just like an instrument. so its physical properties are what makes the most difference to my bones and eardrums and such

music in itself is *cough* "information" i guess. what is information, oooff, then begs the question: what is consciousness? call the philosophers...

more practically, most music these days is recorded digitally anyway. that ship has long sailed. the packets of bits christgau likes in his "cd changer" (it always was an ugly and clunky device) can be equally arranged in a simple playlist if he only knew how to operate the software. we have lossless now, not mp3. hell, current hi-res lossless is way better quality than cd audio, which makes the old medium even plastickier by comparison. just ask neil jung and his pono player (haha, jung)

not to say that objects can't be nice. they often are. i like some objects (like my coffee grinder). but they are something else. the "psychological" effect christgau feels is just the aura of obsolete plastic coasters staring at him from his shelves, screaming of fire hazards and depreciation

...

anyway re:moving, there is a really great movie about book collectors. i think it's called "the collectors"? it illustrates the way a certain group of people suffer for their vice/fetish


NO! actually it's not the collectors, it's THE BOOKSELLERS

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9355194/

very good if you like the subject (i do). watch if you can. streaming ok! (no film strip or projector required lol). glorious and desperate at the same time. the parts that deal with moving, oh, i can relate... but only in memory. those new york apartments crammed with books are a must-see!

-

hey, you know what's actually material? the sun. and sunlight. so happy solstice

(eh, all matter is also information... information, i forget who proposed, might be a third or fifth or some kind of matter. maybe it's all there is... https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/articl...n-fundamental/ )

Bandcamp Friday lives! Next one: February 2.

https://isitbandcampfriday.com/

anthony braxton would like to differ:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C1KTvkvOZVj/

From TFS via Bandcamp:


Amazing! But pay SOMETHING! Don't be a mook!

Jessica Moss released a new song (42 minutes composition), also a name your price release

Another one, from Damon & Naomi:

3 tunes for 3 bucks for a good cause. Buy it:

From Bandcamp Daily:

Guitars That Fight Back: An Intro to Bill Orcutt