fourteenth

I want to sell my records. Meaning the ones I've created. And to be honest, meaning the only real one I've almost got done ;). But I'm not prepared to sell it at any cost. That's for sure. I mean that I want to give it away as free. Music by it's best forms is representing freedom, and it should remain so as it's essence, too.

Nowadays the music sold by the big companies is more or less boring. The small labels are following them or doing the opposite, which is kind of following, too :D. The artists are more or less hit-factory products. Idols, celebrity wannabees etc. For me at least. Of course there's always few brilliant exceptions, which at least keeps me interested. But the whole situation is boring. And while watching the latest record -sales figures it seems that I'm not alone here. While big major label artist sales are going down, the small labels and independent music shops (and industry, I certainly hope so!!) is going more or less the same way it has been. Nowadays I can download all the major label artist discographies with the videos and lyrics from the web. So why should I bother paying for that then? The independent stuff is harder to find as 'free', so it means that I should go to the shops to by it, borrow it from the friends or go to the library, like I used to do earlier on.
Now, the big label record companies are trying to fight against the situation, which from my point of view is stupid, completely. They're pushing the already freely available stuff online with a price tag. Even though the price tag is tiny, 1 EUR, 99 cents etc. It's more than the one you'll have to pay when downloading the torrent from e.g. Piratebay.
At the same time, the record labels are cutting down the costs and signing only the artists that have a good product potentiality. At least that's how I see it.
From my point of view, the record companies are falling back, taking blind Goliath-steps slowly towards random directions while the little Davids are surviving and becoming the kings. For how long, you'll never know.
My point here is, that the record companies should drop the records and start to sell services. To the artists themselves. And then again, to the customers also. If I was a big record company, I'd buy or made a contract with an open Creative Commons -internet community, leave it be and try to sell the services I could to the best and most popular acts on the community. Meanwhile, on other, old-fashioned venues, I would continue producing celebrity-whores for everyday soap-opera purposes. There's always a crowd for brainless nonsence. I know, I watch the AFV. And I would stop cutting the costs and concentrate on the issue that the money I make has to be enough to pay the costs. If it was something more, good. But then again, I'm not a business man, nor I'm a record label multicultural business machine. I've seen few, though :D

thirteenth

Do I consider myself as a bad person if I download music from the internet? No I don't, surprise!?
I grew up in finland, in a middle-class suburb, went to average middle-class schools and did (in 70's standards) average middle-class boy stuff with my friends. One of the things was to buy C-cassettes, go to my friend's home, since he had a record player (and Stereo/HiFi-VCR & Videogame & C64 - I did not :D). I used to get the albums recorded to my cassettes (TDK is still up and running). The albums my friend or his family had or the ones I borrowed from the local public library. The libraries, btw, are one of the most important things available. Hopefully they stay free of charge everywhere! Back then I used to have quite broad taste of music, at least thinking about t now, from Dire Straits to Hanoi Rocks plus everything else in the middle and both sides ;). Since nobody told me what was cool to listen and what was not. And, thanks to my friends, it was a serious fun to sit in a darkened living room and fall in to the musical world of Love Over Gold. Or to the finnish broadcast company (YLE) version of Hitchhikers Guide to Galaxy. Doesn't happen too often nowadays. The actual musical experience is lost between zillions of distractions. And the music is the background noice everywhere. For me it's kind of sad to loose the actual meaning of the music that way. Does it make Live-music more valuable, I think it does. And me, myself, I fill my working days background with music, definitely.
But the whole point in here was the thing that I haven't been paying for my music before, mainly. Other than that, the fact that if you can get something for free from the web, why shouldn't you take it? So it is ok.
Or at least partly. Of course I would be more attached to the music, if I would have to do at least something for it, like walk to the library, borrow a CD and then rip it at home after I've been listening weither it's ok or not. Nowadays the music is so easy to get that you just do it, constantly, without paying too much attentition to it at all. So getting the music has fallen in to the same slot of background noice than the music itself. Sort of greedy mix between laziness and hoarding...
And no, I'm not concidering myself being a better man while doing this. Not at all. The whole society is so easy nowadays, that you can just slip downstream with everybody else without paying attention to anything. And there's the value for myself being tested. Do I have enough will power to create some countermovement actions to my personal life to fight against the boring life inside this world? (London's Burning with boredom now). To activate myself to actally DO something for the things I'm keen to and not just wait for them to swim in my Net-For-The-Torrents :D.

And after all, I'm still not the right guy to judge am I good or bad...