Came across this article today (via Wired’s Listening Post blog), written by a professional musician who put his recordings on his site for free. This was not so much a grab for press but perhaps just a way to make his music more readily available without having to work within the system of the record companies.
Some call this musician suicide in the professional sense by giving away their livelihood, but really, very few musicians make much on record sales, even if it sells well. He says:
Record companies used to charge a fee for making it possible for people to listen to recorded music. Now their main function is to prohibit people from listening to music unless they pay off these corporations.
Or to put it slightly differently, they used to provide you with the tools you needed to hear recorded music. Now they charge you for permission to use tools you already have, that they did not provide, that in fact you paid someone else for. Really what they are doing is imposing a “listening tax.”
We have been doing the same thing here at on our site every month for our EP series and also showing behind the scenes looks at early versions. In some ways it is much more rewarding to just get the music out to people who want to hear it rather than wait for the time to release an ‘official’ album, which in reality could be years.
In fact the idea of ‘official’ album carries little weight anymore as anyone with a laptop and cheap mic, or a video camera can make music or little short films or whatever and put it up for the world to see. Its part of that whole ‘You-ser” created generation we’re in.
So is what we are doing here career suicide? If we have eventual aspirations to be musicians for a living, does offering music for free hurt our chances. Does offering music for free, somehow make our music illegitimate? I would like to think most would answer with a resounding no. Even if few ever download our songs, does any of that really matter anyway? Aren’t we in a way doing it for ourselves; for the enjoyment of it all?
By the way, stay tuned in the next few days for our April EP release… not coming to a store near you, but rather here on our site for the easily digestible price of FREE. We must be crazy.