Some Thoughts...
I was pretty disappointed a couple of weeks back when DFA asked me to remove both the Carl Craig mix of Delia & Gavin, and in particular the Shit Robot track.
I was always under the impression that DFA & LCD Soundsystem had profited enormously from the continuous (well deserved) fawning they receive on blogs, and certainly in my case it was Fluxblog that turned me on to quite how great they were. As a result i've bought a huge number of DFA records & CDs. That's how it works, no?
After all with a release as hotly anticipated as the Delia & Gavin remixes, it's absolutely inevitable that as soon as promos hit the shops MP3s will be circulating on the internet. Like it or not, that is the world the music industry is now operating in. The question is whether this is detrimental to their business. Now personally I believe blogs are like radio. The more people hear and enjoy your music, the more people will buy it. That's got to be even more the case if a release is only available on vinyl, which as far as I know both the records I posted are.
With apologies to DFA, I will also reproduce the message I received.
It was this ending that really threw and horrified me. I mean the last thing I want is to appear that i'm acting above the law, putting record companies out of business for the sake of a few extra notches on my hit counter. Perhaps naively I have always believed that by raving about a record, and by giving people the opportunity to listen to it, I would be (in my own little way) helping sales rather than wiping out their customer base. Even the people who don't buy the records are more likely to see the band next time they're in town; buy the t-shirt; tell their friends about them....
I like to think that MP3 blogs are doing the job that radio should (but doesn't) - which is alerting people to all the fantastic music that IS out there, but would ordinarily remain largely unheard. When I think back to the acts that have blown up over the last couple of years, it's been easy to trace the beginnings of their success back to the music blogs. The Go! Team, MIA, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!, Trentemoller, Lindstrom and many many others all first came to my attention this way. And I would certainly included the success of LCD Soundsystem & DFA in this, after many sites championed both relentlessly.
Despite all this, I could understand that the label didn't want the Carl Craig mix available quite so publicly at this time, seeing as the release date was some time off. I removed the track within about 30 seconds though. It's not up to me to decide. I was pretty surprised by being asked to remove the Shit Robot track though. It's a record that had come out that week completely unheralded, and smacked me round the face shouting 'the world needs to know about this'. I explained on my post that the record had a bad pressing fault that rendered it completely unusable for any purposes other than 'sampling'. I mean if I can't use my original vinyl for anything but scratching with I can't see how anyone is going to consider owning a shitty mp3 of it as an adequate replacement for the real thing.
In addition, since starting my myspace page i'm kind of astonished at the proportion of people reading this who are either proper or wannabe djs. So I get the impression that people reading this site are big record buyers, and would also be spreading the word to other people about music they love. Maybe i'm wrong, and everyone is just leaching tracks to fill their ipods. If so let me know. I'm interested. I mean I don't really have much of a clue about who reads this.
Perhaps the trouble is that i'm basing my assumptions on my own behaviour. I'm still attached to the physical medium music comes on, and to me MP3s don't seem an adequate replacement. For similar reasons I can't get my head round paying for MP3s, since they generally cost the same as a CD or record, are of far inferior quality and have all sorts of nasty DRM attached that means you don't actually own it. Plus, what happens when your hard drive crashes, or when MP3 is replaced by a decent lossless format?
In the same way, I personally wouldn't be able to make my mind up about a record based on a 1 or 2 minute streaming sample. Obviously sometimes you know you love something within 5 seconds, but often it takes 5 or 10 listens to realise how good something is. And not always when you're sitting staring at your monitor. More often than not I fall in love with tracks having burnt them randomly on a CD (or ipod playlist) when suddenly it pops up & you think 'what the bloody hell is this. It's incredible!". DFA in particular are prone to stretching tracks out over 10+ minutes. And if they've decided that's how long the track should be, then that's what I want to listen to. With a 1 minute snatch of the Gorillaz remix, you'd think "yeah, they've stuck a nice beat under the vocals there" but you would miss out entirely on the 6 minutes plus of glorious head-crunching dirty funk at the end... which is what turns it from a being good record to being a fucking incredible record!
I can understand the concerns of the record companies. Obviously as soon as something is released on the internet it's out of your control. And that's scary. But to me all the evidence - record album sales; more gig-going than I can ever remember (have you ever found it so difficult to get tickets for things?); and a general passion for music that seems to be increasing all the time - suggests to me that the labels should embrace the web rather than fighting it.
I'm not having a go at DFA in any way. If they don't want their tracks here that's completely within their rights, and I apologise for potentially messing up their release schedule. I guess i'm just having a crisis of conscience and looking to open up a debate on the issue to work it through in my head!
If you want to legitimately listen to some new DFA material, I suggest you check out the three new Radio mixes available here.
Seems like you'll just have to trust me that both the Delia & Gavin and the Shit Robot records are completely essential. So I suggest you buy the latter immediately, and the former when it comes out in a couple of weeks.
But you know that, right?
I was always under the impression that DFA & LCD Soundsystem had profited enormously from the continuous (well deserved) fawning they receive on blogs, and certainly in my case it was Fluxblog that turned me on to quite how great they were. As a result i've bought a huge number of DFA records & CDs. That's how it works, no?
After all with a release as hotly anticipated as the Delia & Gavin remixes, it's absolutely inevitable that as soon as promos hit the shops MP3s will be circulating on the internet. Like it or not, that is the world the music industry is now operating in. The question is whether this is detrimental to their business. Now personally I believe blogs are like radio. The more people hear and enjoy your music, the more people will buy it. That's got to be even more the case if a release is only available on vinyl, which as far as I know both the records I posted are.
With apologies to DFA, I will also reproduce the message I received.
"It's OK, you just have to understand there is no way giving away my music 30 days ahead of a release will help me.The part I was struggling with was reconciling the fact that on the one hand "I truly believe in sights (sic) like yours and the value they add", and the ending when I learn that "It's killing our business. Truly".
If you wanted to write about it like you did, that is amazing. You are a good writer. If you wanted to stream 1-2 minutes of the remix in a non-downloadable way, that would be OK too. No one would complain. But giving it away is not your right or the whole mp3 blogospheres right to do.
I truly believe in sights like yours and the value they add. I frequent them and learn a lot. I also believe there is a way you could do what you do and truly lead people to buy music after experiencing it with you first. It is just the giving away part. Its killing our business. Truly."
It was this ending that really threw and horrified me. I mean the last thing I want is to appear that i'm acting above the law, putting record companies out of business for the sake of a few extra notches on my hit counter. Perhaps naively I have always believed that by raving about a record, and by giving people the opportunity to listen to it, I would be (in my own little way) helping sales rather than wiping out their customer base. Even the people who don't buy the records are more likely to see the band next time they're in town; buy the t-shirt; tell their friends about them....
I like to think that MP3 blogs are doing the job that radio should (but doesn't) - which is alerting people to all the fantastic music that IS out there, but would ordinarily remain largely unheard. When I think back to the acts that have blown up over the last couple of years, it's been easy to trace the beginnings of their success back to the music blogs. The Go! Team, MIA, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!, Trentemoller, Lindstrom and many many others all first came to my attention this way. And I would certainly included the success of LCD Soundsystem & DFA in this, after many sites championed both relentlessly.
Despite all this, I could understand that the label didn't want the Carl Craig mix available quite so publicly at this time, seeing as the release date was some time off. I removed the track within about 30 seconds though. It's not up to me to decide. I was pretty surprised by being asked to remove the Shit Robot track though. It's a record that had come out that week completely unheralded, and smacked me round the face shouting 'the world needs to know about this'. I explained on my post that the record had a bad pressing fault that rendered it completely unusable for any purposes other than 'sampling'. I mean if I can't use my original vinyl for anything but scratching with I can't see how anyone is going to consider owning a shitty mp3 of it as an adequate replacement for the real thing.
In addition, since starting my myspace page i'm kind of astonished at the proportion of people reading this who are either proper or wannabe djs. So I get the impression that people reading this site are big record buyers, and would also be spreading the word to other people about music they love. Maybe i'm wrong, and everyone is just leaching tracks to fill their ipods. If so let me know. I'm interested. I mean I don't really have much of a clue about who reads this.
Perhaps the trouble is that i'm basing my assumptions on my own behaviour. I'm still attached to the physical medium music comes on, and to me MP3s don't seem an adequate replacement. For similar reasons I can't get my head round paying for MP3s, since they generally cost the same as a CD or record, are of far inferior quality and have all sorts of nasty DRM attached that means you don't actually own it. Plus, what happens when your hard drive crashes, or when MP3 is replaced by a decent lossless format?
In the same way, I personally wouldn't be able to make my mind up about a record based on a 1 or 2 minute streaming sample. Obviously sometimes you know you love something within 5 seconds, but often it takes 5 or 10 listens to realise how good something is. And not always when you're sitting staring at your monitor. More often than not I fall in love with tracks having burnt them randomly on a CD (or ipod playlist) when suddenly it pops up & you think 'what the bloody hell is this. It's incredible!". DFA in particular are prone to stretching tracks out over 10+ minutes. And if they've decided that's how long the track should be, then that's what I want to listen to. With a 1 minute snatch of the Gorillaz remix, you'd think "yeah, they've stuck a nice beat under the vocals there" but you would miss out entirely on the 6 minutes plus of glorious head-crunching dirty funk at the end... which is what turns it from a being good record to being a fucking incredible record!
I can understand the concerns of the record companies. Obviously as soon as something is released on the internet it's out of your control. And that's scary. But to me all the evidence - record album sales; more gig-going than I can ever remember (have you ever found it so difficult to get tickets for things?); and a general passion for music that seems to be increasing all the time - suggests to me that the labels should embrace the web rather than fighting it.
I'm not having a go at DFA in any way. If they don't want their tracks here that's completely within their rights, and I apologise for potentially messing up their release schedule. I guess i'm just having a crisis of conscience and looking to open up a debate on the issue to work it through in my head!
If you want to legitimately listen to some new DFA material, I suggest you check out the three new Radio mixes available here.
Seems like you'll just have to trust me that both the Delia & Gavin and the Shit Robot records are completely essential. So I suggest you buy the latter immediately, and the former when it comes out in a couple of weeks.
But you know that, right?
posted by headphonesex @ 11:34 AM
