You have to feel sorry for the music industry. No sooner have they begun to back down over DRM, then the new bandwagon arrives - industry-free music. It didn't start with Radiohead, but that certainly pulled the issue to the foreground. Anyone who has watched Thom and the boys jamming on Radiohead.tv (now on YouTube), with no slick lighting, no studio director, no make-up - basically no executives -  can't help but feel a tingle of excitement.

"The idea of relying on listeners, treating music as a cooperative, is humbling, yet interesting to me. This is a bit of a manifesto, I'm sorry, and now I'll shut up, but I wonder if we might be able to do this together."
 Kristen HershCoalition for Artists and Stake Holders (CASH) have just launched CashMusic, a site for music lovers to download and pay musicians for the work they like. Musician Kristen Hersh (Throwing Muses, 50FOOTWAVE) is behindthe service which seems to still be in a pre-beta, but looks very promising from it's minimalist, subtle interface. As well as letting you name your price, and download DRM-free tracks, artists on the network can share the source files for their songs freely under a creative commons license so that other artists can remix their work. 

To anyone who's ever swum through the trench of shit of rying to get a record deal, this is very promising. As a Nirvana producer in one of the links on the front of the site illustrates, conventional music business economics is rarely any good for bands:

Thoughts On Sustainability - posted to cashmusic.org

I often feel there is an inverse relationship between quality of output and material success in the music business. This is distressing, but not out of line with what I've come to expect. Throwing Muses would wander the halls of Warner Brothers back in the day, muttering, "You don't have to suck in order to work here, but it helps."

Now, however, the financial climate and current upheaval in the music business mean that musicians like me are genuinely poor investments for the traditional powers that be. We do not engage in lowest common denominator trendiness, and so don't warrant the expenses of marketing dollars and company overhead. Okay, I get that; this is a business. However, I believe that when you sell toothpaste, you should be selling a goo that helps prevent cavities and when you sell music, you should be selling sound that enriches the listener's inner life. There is today a twisted kind of natural selection in the entertainment industry -- a sort of "survival of the blandest" -- the result, I imagine, of mind-fucking marketing techniques, bandwagon appeal, hype. To me this stuff is ugly, not beautiful. Given this, I can only assume that record labels are not for me. I've said it before -- I will always play music -- but in the past, it was a record company's job to make sure you heard that music. They sold their product; they had funded it, it was theirs to sell. How to sell music without them? I liken our situation to that of the family farmer's -- how can we keep from going under without going corporate?

This is what I think: we specialize -- we offer an organic product. It is lumpy and expensive and made with love and it can save you. It's the right thing to do. It isn't shiny or poisonous, which can be disconcerting to people who've been raised on shiny poison, but it's natural, it's high-end and we want you to eat it.

To that end, I think I need to engage in a grassroots kind of capitalism, choosing principles over profits, values over image, ideals over marketing. I have to create a permeable membrane between artist and listener -- I'm a craftsperson, after all. The church of the rock star that the music industry televangelists hawk has always been anathema to me anyway. This is about songs and sounds, nothing else.

Music is a tenuous profession in good times, hard times mean some of us disappear. I'm not looking for pity, but collaboration. Coming to you is the best way I can think of to continue being a musician.

The model is not new, it's akin to public radio's listener supported programming and Community Supported Agriculture's subscriptions to underwrite crops. In other words, music grows on trees, but money doesn't and I'm unwilling to suck in order to work here. Therein lies the value proposition. This little business will be interactive and intelligent; you will not be lied to, no shiny poison, no middle man.

The idea of relying on listeners, treating music as a cooperative, is humbling, yet interesting to me. This is a bit of a manifesto, I'm sorry, and now I'll shut up, but I wonder if we might be able to do this together.

Comments (3)

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written by Brian Wright, January 12, 2008

While I like the idea of the CASH coalition (redundant, I know) and the grass roots movement forming a new music business model, and we definitely need a new one, the math on that balance sheet is off. On sales of $3 million, the balance sheet only adds up to $993,156.25 (assuming 5 band members). So, where did the additional $2,006,843.75 go? That's a lot of money that's unaccounted. More specifically, who ended up with it?

If the unaccounted money is from the retail markup on the CDs and the retailers got it, like Wal-Mart, you'd think the retailers would be doing better than they are and places like Tower wouldn't be going bankrupt.

Thanks.

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Brian from A Big Guitar

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written by nic, January 14, 2008

thanks Brian, my bad - basically I trimmed that table.If you click the link above it - http://www.negativland.com/albini.html - you can see the full breakdown of 'costs'.

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written by Brian Wright, January 31, 2008

Thanks for the update. The bigger balance sheet does make more sense. Although, some of the costs in that bigger balance sheet seem a bit on the strange side. But then, I guess not everything in the music business makes a whole lot of sense when it comes down to the artist.

Thanks.

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Brian W.

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