I know it’s a thing we all talk about, and opinions are held passionately. At the same time, I’ve discerned a lack of energy here and there about finding a position to hold, in view of the prevailing modus operandi of capitalism and our being impelled to toe the line. But at this point in time I have decided to withdraw all the music I can from any streaming services, because they are not about music but rather about data collection, and I’m not interested in being part of that, for little to no reward.
A little while ago I took everything off Spotify, which still I consider to be the very worst of all the streaming services; quite apart from anything else the idea of having all the world’s music available wherever you are at any given time seems to me to devalue the work that has been put into making it, the distinction of the original creation, and the value of variety and difference. Back when we went to record shops and bought albums, because we’d saved enough money to do so, and then we went home and listened to them all the way through, the way the musicians had intended their work to be heard, we maintained a very special relationship with the music we were hearing. There was less of it, because buying an album was the exception, and the albums one actually owned were treasured.
We admired the covers. If there were notes, we read them with interest – even the acknowledgements. Almost Famous is a magnificent movie about music lovers in the 1970s and even the artwork on the front of the LPs that one had amassed in one’s collection is given the respect it deserves. Essays have been written about Charlie Watts’s presence on the cover of the Rolling Stones’s Get yer ya-yas out. This is appropriate. Betty Mabry is on the cover of Miles Davis’s Filles de Kilimanjaro. I can’t stand Pink Floyd but everyone can picture the cover of The Dark Side of the Moon.
Anyway now everything is apparently free. It’s no trouble to dial up a name online and have the artist’s catalogue at one’s disposal. You can pay to be part of these services, but you don’t have to, and so little of what you actually contribute goes within a bull’s roar of an actual artist, so the entire exercise is a festival of corruption.
I was previously on Distrokid, which made everything very simple, but I have now left. The thirty dollars I made in the time I spent there – well, who cares. Music will never bring very much money in but I am damned if I’m going to let someone else reap the rewards of my creative efforts.
From now on, if I release an album it will go onto Bandcamp, and that will probably be it. If you want to hear my work, go there. If you like it, pay for it and you’ll receive either a CD posted to you or a download you can access wherever it suits you. I have found that Maria Schneider is fundamentally opposed to streaming, and her marvellous work is only available through ArtistShare. Recently I heard The Necks in a breathtaking performance at Brunswick Ballroom – I have all their studio albums and I find that they don’t stream either. This I respect and I join them in rejecting this awful exploitation of the honest work of creative people. Several of their albums have sold out, meaning you can’t actually get hold of them anymore, unless you’re prepared to pay the prices asked by the second-hand vendors at eBay or Discogs. I love that items I have in my collection are so difficult to access. Some people don’t even have CD players any more. They are missing OUT.
Treasure your collection. Expand it at will. Get more shelves! (We just did, and they were free through the Boroondara Hard Rubbish Rehome.) Look at your complete collection of Haydn symphonies, or your several versions of ‘The Well-Tempered Clavier’ or all the Miles Davis bootlegs you’ve amassed, and rejoice in the time you’ll have with them now and in the years to come.
20.v.2024