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TOM McEWEN

gets to grip with the latest technology

mp3 to go?

 

Rock and Roll is the new capitalism!!!!

Musicians have always been the stormtroopers of the enterprise

economy. Whether it's the archetypal Thatcherite small business

of Billy Bragg, or the dream factories that spin out Take That

or the Spice Girls, the music business has always been about 99%

business. That business re-invents itself at a speed that puts

the rest of the economy to shame.

 

Every few years a totally new mechanism comes along that

allows the struggling musicians and indie labels to be the

parasitic slugs of five years time. From Sheet Music to shellac,

singles to LPs, CD to the Internet, at each stage new technology

suddenly allows you to get into the mainstream on the back of a

few hundred pounds. Some built businesses. Others were vanity

publishers or, lowest of the low(!), hobbyists.

 

Joe Meek in the UK and Berry Gordy in Detroit built studios

in their bathrooms and basements in the 50's and early 60's.

This enabled them to create hits cheaper than the "professional"

studios controlled by the big labels. Richard Branson created

Virgin to replace several layers of intermediaries between the

recordmakers and the public. Punk was the convenient

revolutionary label, but the real change was the fact that for

£350, you could release a thousand singles and get airplay.

Cheap drum machines, sequencers and sound effects mixed

with record decks spawned the house boom. Baby Bird et al in the

last few years brought us literal bedsitter albums -

professional radio-friendly hits created at home with a few

hundred quids' worth of recording equipment.

 

In every case, a few years on, the louche excesses of sex,

drugs and rock'n'roll set in. The artistes and their hangers-on

gain habits that thousands of music fans pay for. They create

ever-increasing rip-off concepts to soak the public. Six

different versions of the same single in lovely coloured

packaging? £20 for a t-shirt? £300 for a leather tour jacket?

Rip-off or enterprise?

 

And now we have "MP3" files on the internet - record pressing

and distribution for free, and the tapeless, diskless Walkman

that stores hours of songs at better than cassette

quality. All the old chestnuts are falling from the trees again.

"Democratising access to music" "Struggling artists can get

publicity and audiences for their resolutely non-commercial

work", "This will kill off the music industry"

 

A few hours at www.mp3.com will net you an insight into the

phobia of the "fat guy in a Lexus". Wade through the

semi-literate doggerel on the discussion groups and see how the

Grateful Dead fans find common cause with the gun-toting

militiamen of Michigan. Music on the internet, and the freedom

to make free copies whenever, wherever, is about freedom.

Well as a recent popstar said, round about the time he

decided that he, rather than the record company, would decide

which bands his profits would subsidise, "I don't want your

freedom!". Once upon a time, the labels would sign 20 acts. 17

would bomb and lose them a lot of money. Two would break even

and be dropped, and one would pay for the others. Now the

successful no longer want to subsidise the 19 no-hopers. Or if

they do, it's their mates, their taste, their terms.

 

And how the citizens of mp3.com love to howl in protest at the

idea that SDMI (Secure Digital Music Initiative - an industry

body setting standards in music to include copy protection)

might restrict their freedom. The "government" of mp3.com, who

recently netted several millions of dollars by floating their

company on the back of their music liberation efforts talk a lot

about helping the little guy - musician or listener. To their

credit, they have acknowledged the importance of charging for

songs - so bands and writers can get some payback. But all the

while, they take 50% of the sale price of downloaded tracks - a

reduction on the 80-90% that VAT, record shops, distributors and

labels keep, but all they need to keep is a file on a hard disk,

an internet link open, and a (very) few programmers to organise

the site. Unless their customers make illegal copies, they will

coin it in.

 

"Meet the new boss...same as the old boss" (The Who, Won't get

Fooled Again, for those of you too young to remember)

If you want to give music away for free there has always

been a way. it's called busking. At best the authors and

performers of the 50,000 songs on mp3.com, (mainly by unknowns

beavering away in bedroom studios) will become the cyber-buskers

of tomorrow. I wrote and sang and recorded in my garret, outside

the Pompidou Centre, in Greenwich Village bars, Printers Alley

in Nashville, Detroit Blues Bars, and the Tube and Covent Garden

in London. I did floor spots at folk clubs.

I ran Edinburgh Songwriters Showcase. In all of these I barely covered

the cost of travel and a pint. Nice if you can afford it.

For a few years in the 1980's I did make a living - releasing

records and tapes and touring round Universities and Clubs. I

joined PRS and MCPS, and discovered that the royalties for one

national radio play, or for doing my own stuff while a support

act to big act, netted more than the gig fees did.

 

The industry survives, because it creates mechanisms for

mass consumption, and these adapt as fast as I said at the start

of this article. Somewhere along the way it affords the

opportunities for writer-performers like John Hiatt and Richard

Thompson to play all over the world to a few hundred people in

each town, and to sell a few thousand records in each of several

countries. But when Bonnie Raitt covers one of their songs,

that's when they earn enough to live. "I'd like to thank her for

putting more'n'a few sets of wheels on the bus" John Hiatt(1993

Glasgow and probably a few other towns!).

 

So, yes, the internet offers opportunities, but deal with the

central questions before you bother. Is this just to buy you

drink'n'drugs, or to feed a family and pay the rent. Are you

going to create something distinctive that everyone will want to

hear, or will this just be another professional-sounding

radio-friendly track like the other 50,000 I can download. Or

even worse, are you doing this "just for yourself"? In which

case, why bother telling the rest of us?

As Billy Connolly said (to a heckler) "You need a good agent,

pal, instead of staying in the dark, handling yourself!"

İTom McEwen 1999