The moment music became a commercial saleable entity it destroyed the mere essence of why we should make music in the first place. Records were created to fit a popularity at a given time and then priced to demand. How can this ethos fit into art, Van Gogh didn’t become successful in his entire lifetime and had no real popularity until years after his death. The reason of music is to explore new worlds of sound and melodic discovery. A system without rules and boundaries. Not caring if a bunch of youths or elders will listen or want to spend their money on your product. It’s about the bigger picture which a very few people can perceive. The greatest problem for all us is how do we survive and earn a living from all this and have the time an space to spend discovering. I know as a teenager I spent weeks just trying to learn how to record drums properly and I’m still learning. I was somewhat privalidged growing up in a studio environment. This can’t really be achieved by doing a day job and feeling tired at the weekend after a long week of working. One needs time to create and reflect into the realm of sonic possibilities, even sometimes remove yourself from day to day society to gain a broader perspective, like the Buddhist monks do when they retreat to a cave or temple to meditate.
I liked how the ancient Sufi culture treated musicians, they were paid a salary by the state to perform. Also we all often talk of how England/London was an incredible place in the 60s and 70s for emerging bands. Well that’s because one could survive on the doll money the government paid them. Today in England how can anyone survive on the government allowance. It is also very hard for most musicians to gain Arts Council sponsorship with all the cuts going down. Most larger scale record companies have no interest in developing acts that don’t have a commercial potential.
I believe there can be a a way of obtaining a system that works for all of us. If we convinced 10 of the most wealthy business men/women/companies in the world to donate £10 million a year to a mutual fund that could be split into yearly salaries of say £25,000 per year per band/artist musician. They would be selected by an artist submitting their work to a listening team then members of that team would visit the artists setup to see if they were legit, as some artist I have worked with can’t really play an instrument and just use loops and samples made by someone else. That would give around 4,000 artists per year a chance to live and create any dream they wished. The only condition of this investment would be to produce and create two albums per year or they would loose the funding. This would be a start and no one caring if any of these artist were to become successful or not it would give a incredible surge of talent into the public domain. If people wanted the albums they could do a similar system to Radiohead’s ‘In Rainbows ‘ and pay what they wanted for the digital album or get it for free. If they wanted a vinyl/CD it would be a profitless system only paying for manufacturing costs. The public would have a shock knowing the actual price per unit (on large scales around £1 per vinyl, instead of the £18 in HMV/Amazon)
There are actually many ways of doing something like this, another would be to build multiple housing estates with a small recording studio in each room and communal live rooms, with giant canteens for food. Paid a small amount each month but living costs and food would be free. You could have audition rooms to gain access to live there. This could be done in each city around the world.
I don’t believe in monetizing music as it doesn’t really help the cause and there is enough money being made from other mediums like banking, commodities, and technology to easily fund music. If only all these company just lowered the profit margins a tad, then the left over percent went into art funding.
Just a thought for everyone on this day.
thezodiacofficial 