[Glice]

I'm a better musician than most. No, no - before you start. I really am. Ok, subjectivity and all that. I've worked fucking hard and I'm a fucking amazing musician. Do you know why you've not bought my record? No? Because I don't want to even pretend that I want to make money out of it. Not because of some holy act of benefaction to the download world. No. Because, fuck you, if I can't make money out of some 15 years of hard work (and none of you fuckers practise 4-8 hours a day)... fuck you.

I've been offered gigs. Paid gigs. Properly monetised, c£250 p/h gigs that I've turned down because, in all honesty, while that's a lot of money (especially given my utter poverty right now), I can't console myself with playing commercial music. I can't bring myself to play shit flamenco for corporate functions. So where does that leave me? I play for fun. I've spent all of my adult life working like a dog to play for fun. I give mp3s or digital versions of my music to friends because I like them, and some of them like me.

If I was an electrician, or a plumber [etc], it would cost £50 just for me to stand and tut at your doorstep. As it is, I'm expected to give away my music. Ok, a lot of you might hate it, but... well, if you don't want my services, I'm not fucking giving them to you. This is not an either/ or situation. Fuck you.

This isn't a fuck you to downloaders. I accept the situation. But what the situation ultimately means is that there's thousands, possibly millions, of people out there whose music you're not hearing. This isn't anti-download - I know people like Herr Park don't care in the same way I do. I know there's plenty of people for whom music isn't a simple revenue stream in the way it was. I know there's those who say 'fuck you, capitalist'. That's fine. Call me an old-school capitalist, but if you don't want my services - and let's be clear, my services include time, study, labour, practise, devotion, sacrifice etc - then you're not fucking getting them for free.

Again, this isn't anti-download - I'm looking around for soundtrack and other monetised work in the music industry, and I'm planning a few events because the old stratagems of cod-Beatles, record industry ideology don't work any more - in the interim, there's a lot of people losing out on a lot of great musicians who are looking to commercial work because there simply isn't a financially stable outlet for less commercial work.