Post · bonfire.cafe

This is a video that Weird Paul posted on Instagram yesterday. My wife sent it to me.

In it, he describes what it was like getting his first recording contract.

He mentions opening for a major local band on the strength of a DIY cassette release. He mentions that cassette release getting sold through a zine based record catalog. He mentions his first 7" being reviewed in other zines. He discusses that, on the strength of those zines, a bigger DIY label with some street cred reached out to him directly and put his first record out on cassette, CD, and LP.

Andrew (Television Executive)

@ajroach42@retro.social replied · last year

Think about the networks that had to exist in order for that to happen.

Think about the Discovery Process that had to be in place for a kid from suburban pitsburg to put out a tape at 16, end up opening for a band out of washington, and included in a catalog of records that that band endorsed and recommended to fans across the country while they were on tour.

Think about the Power in those kinds of networks, and the way that power has been diluted by search engines.

Andrew (Television Executive)

@ajroach42@retro.social replied · last year

Imagine, for a minute, that you:

1) still go to live music shows
2) go to a live music show in a suburb of the major metropolitan city in your area featuring a band that was big enough that you were willing to drive a little while to be there
3) arrive to find that the opening act is a 17 year old, and he's surprisingly good
4) find at the merch table that this band that you love has a printed catalog of music they recommend, along with prices and mailing addresses, and you can just ship an envelope with $10 in it (or however much tapes cost in 1988) and a few days later a tape would show up at your house, recommended to you by the band that you had just paid money to see.

I spent a *lot* of time in the modern DIY music scene. I ran a venue for several years. I still book shows.

I've almost never seen anything approaching that level of solidarity from modern artists. They have websites and bandcamps and instagram feeds where they share posts from "the homies" and they'll talk about "the homies" but they aren't taking the time to collate and curate the info. They depend on spotify for discovery. They get fucked.

RealJournalism

@RealJournalism@mastodon.social replied · 2 weeks ago

@ajroach42 What music sites would you recommend instead that don't bust unions? #1u

Andrew (Television Executive)

@ajroach42@retro.social replied · last year

Anyway, the culture jammers and indie publishers of the 80s and 90s got a lot wrong, and they didn't know their own history very well.

But they really nailed some stuff too.

1) Print is good.
2) Sharing info about the things you love is *vital* to helping them survive
3) Give away a sample, encourage copying, make it crystal clear how to get the full thing (and keep that network running as well as you can for as long as you can.)
4) solidarity forever

Andrew (Television Executive)

@ajroach42@retro.social replied · last year

So, discussion questions:

- How can you lift others up?

- How can your work be a pointer to the work of others?

- How can you (re?)integrate Shareware Principles into your life and work?

- If someone's work brings you joy, how can you support or encourage them?

- How can we re-build and re-strengthen the networks that Google, Facebook, Youtube and Amazon have stolen from us?

- How can we reclaim the magic of tape traders, pirate radio, and zine culture in the modern era?

- When and why did we decide that Free was the most important consideration in media consumption and curation?

- Who is harmed by the spotify/youtube/netflix model? Does that matter?

- Who is harmed by piracy? Does that matter?

Andrew (Television Executive)

@ajroach42@retro.social replied · last year

I'm going to start talking about some of these, slowly, from the bottom up.

Andrew (Television Executive)

@ajroach42@retro.social replied · last year

Who is harmed by piracy? Mostly billionaires. Individual artists and authors and whoever mostly do better when people are exposed to their work.

Who is harmed by the spotify/youtube/netflix model? Mostly artists and creators, who used to be able to make a medium sized amount of money from direct sales, and who are now reduced to a very small amount of money (or to negative amounts of money) by streaming services. (There are exceptions! They are exceptional.)

We have a problem right now where it's not a choice between Piracy and Paying artists, it's a choice between Piracy and Paying Spotify/Netflix, et al. Both ways, artists lose!

There was a time in the recent past where widespread piracy resulted in a direct material increase in revenue, either from Ticket Sales, or Merch Sales, or Physical media sales.

This is rarely the case anymore.

Artists get ~half or less of what you spend on their tickets (because ticketmaster turns a $60 ticket in to a $160 ticket after fees. This is hardly an exaggeration, and the reason I'm not going to see bright eyes next year in spite of the fact that I could easily afford the base ticket price) and venues even horn in on merch sales, demanding a commission from the artists for the privilege of selling merch.

It's absurd.

We, as listeners, watchers, and consumers can help!

1+ more replies (not shown)

bonfire.cafe

A space for Bonfire maintainers and contributors to communicate

bonfire.cafe: About · Code of conduct · Privacy · Users · Instances

Bonfire social · 1.0.0 no JS en

Automatic federation enabled