quoted 6 lines but as someone who has experience in this>but as someone who has experience in this
>realm, i can tell you that is rarely the case...audit practices at
>record labels are poor at best...that is not to say that in this case
>they may be perfectly acceptable...i personally have no interest in this
>particular case, but feel obligated to state that in most of these
>disputes, the artist is the one who gets screwed
The artist usually gets screwed by the label, yes, but the label has all
sorts of exciting ways to get screwed themselves. Owning an indie record
label seldom involves rolling around in large piles of cash. I'm not
disagreeing with you here at all, mind you, just adding.
Whatever the case, excluding advances, labels generally pay artists
strictly per accounting period, so it's not like they cut a check every
time a CD sells.
quoted 4 lines not to draw out this thread, but, yes, my experience leads me to question>not to draw out this thread, but, yes, my experience leads me to question
>an entity that says, "we are unfeasably scrupilously fair with royalty
>payments". this is a simple question of dollars and cents: you sell so
>many albums, u get so much in royalties...
This is a bit simplistic. How many units a label ships off to distribution
is a readily available figure, but units _sold_ is quite difficult to pin
down.
quoted 4 lines What the fuck do you call this!!! Are advertising execs so stupid or is>What the fuck do you call this!!! Are advertising execs so stupid or is
>just this an indication of the depths they can sink in their brand of
>intellectual prostitution. The programmes that surround the adverts are
>usually no better, being to ads what shit is to flies.
People usually offer the argument that "If you remember the commercial or
the name of the product, it's done it's job", which I think is a load of
crap. IMHO, the purpose of a commercial should be to offer convincing
evidence that the product is worth spending your hard-earned money on.
However, I'll put up with them because they do pay for the programs that I
actually want to watch.
quoted 1 line I'm not trying to say stop watching television or buying soft-drink>I'm not trying to say stop watching television or buying soft-drink
Not a bad idea, though ...
quoted 4 lines If you approach them actively, you should be>If you approach them actively, you should be
>able to tease out all sorts of _facts_, instead of absorbing them
>passively and being conned. There is no such thing as an invisible
>conspiracy; they just hope you won't notice.
Yeah ... I'd like to think that you can only fool people once with any
particular gimmick, and that people don't really buy into schlocky
advertising anymore. But I may be overly optimistic. I've notice plenty
of self-effacing commercial campaigns, so it seems like even they know it.
The reality seems to be the power of exposure. Like we were talking about
with the IDM poll: It's not necessarily that _In_Sides_ was really the
BEST, but most people on the list had it and liked it well enough, so it
got the most votes.
quoted 6 lines OK, what has this got to do with IDM? A lot in my opinion. When>OK, what has this got to do with IDM? A lot in my opinion. When
>Intelligent dance music was first hyped in Australia all those moons ago
>with those two Warp compilations, Its selling point, which seems to have
>been obscured or discarded in the recent American invasion, was that
>techno had become a medium of (almost covert) communication of thoughts,
>feelings and ideas without words.
This is interesting: easy to experience, but difficult to prove. It's what
you get when you listen to an artist and ask yourself "What are they
tripping on?" I think that this was a reaction against the rock & roll
thing of some guy screaming in your face ... but it also gets to where all
you have is meaningless wallpaper, at which point I think that something
important has been lost. There's no two ways about it: the masses _do_
need something do identify with, and this is why pop music sells more than
electronica. What the music industry today gives us to identify with is
egos. Now rock & roll is on the downslide and the great industry PR
machine still needs to be fed, so they're trying to make techno the new
rock & roll. The fundamental change that electronica _could_ make is to
put ideas at the forefront rather than egos, but this requires both the
artists and the public to really get with it. (On a related note, I think
that's what the "I" in "IDM" means ... it's to do with the fact that we're
intelligent enough to not be content with just being music _consumers_ and
accepting whatever the PR machine can shove down our throats the easiest.
The music is almost a side effect.)
All these issues we keep batting around are all symptoms of the same
situation, and it all has to do with how the industry was built. Just like
advertising, the question isn't "How good is the product?", but "How easy
is it to market?" I don't know that I'm that worried about electronica
getting sucked into this; but what I _am_ worried about is the implication
that you have two choices: to be a industry clown techno-rocker or a
starving wallpaperist.
quoted 4 lines Autechre: "AntiEP" and Richard H Kirk "Agents with false memories" are>Autechre: "AntiEP" and Richard H Kirk "Agents with false memories" are
>two examles that spring readily to my mind, which require active
>participation on the part of the listener to read their message(s) (of
>course, they're also very satisfying and a lot of fun).
I'd also point to Muslimgauze and Black Lung (David Thrussel), who both
make music well-suited to their social agendas. I grant that it may turn a
few people off, but, given that everyone's music is essentially based in
their thoughts, ideas, and attitudes, I'd rather have _something_ to think
about than nothing even offered. And, if it's strong enough that masses of
people can identify with it, then we're really on to something.
--Seofon