Recently, Mike Scott, a good singer-songwriter buddy of mine commented on what it feels like to find out that your music is being illegally shared on the Internet. The gist of his feelings on it seems to basically be, ‘fuck it. cool with me, i guess’.
I have to agree.
People ask me how I feel about it fairly often and I pretty much share his attitude.
I find a certain thrill in making a new song and giving it away for free on the Internet when I can. When you’re bound by contract to a record label or publishing agreement (neither of which I don’t recommend to anybody these days), you’re not always able to do such things. These days, I’m not under any specific contract with anybody and I can come and go as I please. So, why not give it away when I can, right?
That said, I sometimes wonder if, by giving away my music or keeping the price down on my recordings when i sell them at shows, I send out some signal that tells people out there in the universe that I don’t care enough about my music or find value in it enough to always put a price tag on it. This has been suggested to me by a number of folks I know and I suppose there might be something to it.
Of course I would always much prefer that people love my music enough and find intrinsic value in everything I create enough to pony up the measly 99 cents or whatever it costs to buy it. I work hard on this shit and put everything into writing, recording and performing it for the masses. And since I gave up having a real job many many years ago, and I don’t have a college degree to fall back on, and the idea of starting up a brand new career at the age of 50 doesn’t sound all that promising to me, every bit of scratch I make off my music these days helps me do the simple yet important things in my life, such as keeping a rough over my head, eating, having a phone and a car to get me places.
I’ve certainly come a long way from feeling guilt over actually making a little money from making music and art. Years ago, I felt so weird making a living off my music, I could only justify doing so by contributing to every charity imaginable and supporting other artists. I went a little overboard because it felt weird looking at being in a band as my sole way of making a living.
I laugh at that now. What the fuck was I thinking?
Actually, I’m almost pissed off at myself for ever buying into some of the bullshit I allowed to be drilled into my young, dumb brain by the so-called punk rock powers-that-be I once looked up to, people that admonished me and my fellow punk musicians for daring to quit our life-draining day jobs to hit the road and do what we all could to make OUR honest way of living. I could have stayed working in the Reno casinos (the few that are still left). I could have kept parking cars or driving a cab. By now, I might even be a supervisor at the Montgomery Ward I worked at.
Oh, never mind. They went out of business years back too.
I believe that there should definitely be some sort of middleground in the logic that musicians and artists don’t work like real people do and therefore shouldn’t make money doing the things that they love and, y’know, do for a living. I don’t know where that middleground is or how to make music fans come to the realization that, without them, their support and yes, their money, musicians and artists can’t really survive. At least not very well.
Regardless of all this, when someone admits to me that they downloaded music I’ve created or been a part of creating, I generally tell them that I’m just happy they have the music, that that’s the most important part of the equation. At the base of it all, I really am just happy that perfect strangers take me home with them.
At least a little piece of me.
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johnnyproblem reblogged this from kevinseconds and added:
say here but I would add...art/music/film need...mind that...
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