the music biz or screwed nine ways to sunday

I am not a recording artist. I love music but it is a hobby but still I really love music and most of my tastes are out of the main stream. That and I generally do not like large corporations. I am fine with business and money making. Entrepreneurial spirit is a powerful force for the betterment of individuals and society in general. My problem with large corporations is with who runs and I do not mean the CEO Fat cats scratching each others backs. I don’t them either but I am talking about shareholders and Wallstreet. Shareholders and the “street” are both essentially mobs. Mob is the right word they are a unruly group of people. And here is a fact:

A person can be smart but people are always stupid.

Shareholders are like the zombies in a George Romero film. Only they aimless move around in blind hunger for profit instead of brains. and they don’t care how they get it. They just want profit and growth in the short term. Never a thought is given to what is right or how something could affect an industry, a nation, it citizens, of even there investment in the long term.

This especially pains me when it comes to the small guy being hurt. And when it is and artist(in the broads sense of the word) it bothers me more. Then there is a cultural impact in addition to the other negative side effects. Having the shareholder of multinational media corporations or wallstreet analysts control the fate of entire art forms is disheartening.

Cheap computing and the Internet have a lot of promise to help the little guy. I just hope it doesn’t become yet another way to squeeze the talented, creative, risk taking people that make their industry whether music or other artistic endeavours. That is kind of up to the consumer. Which is a group of people and you remember the rule about people…

This rant was brought on by this. It reminded me of the famous diatribe of Steve Albini some years ago the Problem With Music. Albini is mostly known for producing and recording acts like Nirvana and the Pixies but his first band Big Black was influential. It was one of the first bands to link aggressive guitar riffs with a electronic beats.

homemade noize