Richard Shindell: Worth Listening To
Economics, Just a link to something you might want to read, Media, Music, Rights, Values, popular culture - - Posted on May, 3 at 4:10 pm by Amanda
Both his music and his thoughts on the digital age.
I don’t require musicians I like to be rational, sane, compassionate, intelligent, thought provoking and in general good people. But it’s awfully nice when one of them turns out to be so. The superb singer/songwriter Richard Shindell has some thoughts here and more here on being an artist in the age of illegal downloading. He speaks sense.
This is how things will be done from now on: just between us humans. No lawsuits, no cartels, no coercion - just respect, good faith, and solidarity.
While I think a lot of anti-piracy measures and attitudes have been hamfisted, insulting and obnoxious (and I don’t use P2P myself), I don’t make my living from music so I can’t begrudge those who do their strong feelings on the matter. Still, when he talks about the “better angels” attitude, and respect between consumer and artist, that makes sense to me. I think there are lots of things that can be done to turn pirates into people who support artists — not least of which is “the passage of time” and “embiggening of musical tastes” since (IIRC) it’s teens/uni-aged kids who do it on the grandest and most unthinking scale, and it’s mostly directed towards the more top 100 end of things. DRM-free eMusic’s corporate line has long been that it pitches the long tail and independent acts to “mature” music fans who are vastly less likely to fileshare. This was actually borne out when Random House tracked piracy of it’s eMusic DRM-free audiobook files and found … none. “Value adding” strategies — turning “pirates” into payers, at least on some scale — are surely the best way forward for the industry. If the labels won’t do it at that level, it is gratifying to see artists take the initiative.
Richard still thinks it’s important the artist gets paid (in this case, him) but he’s actually doing some constructive, realistic things about it. Go, Richard!
Posted in Economics, Just a link to something you might want to read, Media, Music, Rights, Values, popular culture |
May 3rd, 2008 at 10:29 pm
You mean that ,eh,maybe Australian musicians,like eh, ACDC, eh,like, have a clarity of thought and language use..similar to your given example!? When ,I watched a video of,one of their,eh, members[on tv… years ago] that,um ,had across the whole interview,um,say like um, 35 ums per minute of ,um, questions answered,and,um, statements,um, of, a clarify,and um, and,um, detailing matter!? Um, if my um, memory,um,serves me,um correctly,it was one ,um, eh, Molly Meldrum,like ,um ,ascertaining,the,um, facts ,um from the ,eh, member of the,um, band.Eh! Noticing at the ,um, time ,how popular ,and ,by um, association, um, eh, how powerful they were then,my, um, bloody insulted disparaging jealousy,about who gets the money etc. in our society.Gave way, to a unrepentant laughter and a sense of self worth,beyond any activity they performed. I havent as yet written a song about that interview,because the right to..should be the undiscovered talent of.. The Molly Meldrum Focusing Big Band!?
May 3rd, 2008 at 10:29 pm
I like it…like an “honor system”. TRUST & SHARING & MUTUAL RESPECT over GREED. Very mature.
I subscribe to emusic, as you probably know Ken…and apart from the occasional album download being unavailable for those outside the USA (which can get annoying sometimes) the variety of alternative music is superb…incl. various Rock, Electro, Jazz, Classical etc genres…and the price is reasonable… particularly if you pay for the year. It probably works out at 5 bucks an LP if i include computer usage, electricity & so on.
And it’s totally legal.
But…it is based around “alternative” to mainstream radio/labels…which goes down a treat w/ me…:)
I imagine the fella from Frenzal Rhomb, fooled recently by the HEAVY FOOTSTEP types into participating in a NOT SO COOL vid to be distributed to schools, would be interested in Richard Shindell’s views.
May 7th, 2008 at 11:56 am
One of my favourite CDs of all time is the one that Richard Shindell put out quite some time ago with Dar Williams and Lucy Kaplansky: ‘Cry, Cry, Cry’. Well worth checking out.