Warning: this article contains traces of irony and self indulgent journalism
The internet is the greatest thing that has ever happened to the music industry. Given the current climate of the music market this is a bold statement bound to cause riots and looting. Possibly a more apt statement would be something like this, the internet is the best thing that has ever happened to consumers of electronic media. This is coming from an Australian, a vast land with a small population lumped primarily into a handful of coastal cities; in many regards a technological and cultural backwater. The internet has given us (Australians and the rest of the world too) access to remote underground cultures and helped to create a stronger global culture and greater awareness.
Almost 15 years ago the Mortal Kombat movie was released, marking my first encounter with industrial music, a disturbing and compelling event for a youth still overcoming years of damage being brought up in a Christian fundamentalist family. The Mortal Kombat soundtrack was the first album in my collection that I actually liked. Unfortunately I spent many years lost in the woods with a near fatal encounter with sheer and unbridled eclecticism (one should never listen to Alanis Morisset next to the Backstreet Boys, if at all), riding the indie rock explosion of the late nineties, and jumping on a localised grunge revival at the turn of the millennium. Did I mention I grew up in the sticks? Ah, nostalgia… the point here is that without the internet Australians are doomed to half-baked home grown crap (stuff that makes radio play) and imported “mainstream” (the other stuff that makes radio play). All that I know about industrial would come from a handful of movie soundtracks and Reznor albums. Sure there are, or at least were, till the internet killed many of them, indie (indie in the alternate sense but not the alternate that sucks) music stores but these stores are such a tiny fragmented picture of what’s really out there.
Internet, good for the consumer and theoretically should be good for the music industry too with greater access to untapped markets. We all know what’s wrong with the net; we pirate the shit out of anything that can be datafied. Why, because it’s easy, free and music labels are the devil. I’ve done my fair share of downloading so don’t worry, I’m not going to preach from my high-and-might alter. I didn’t bat an eye as I deviously downloaded KMFDMs entire life’s work. It’s a bit hard to put down entire discographies to research but this is a card many of us play when quizzed about illegal downloading.
Pirating music is counterproductive. If you don’t know it yet it’s about time you heard it, pirating is bad for everyone. It’s bad for the labels, it’s bad for the musician, it’s bad for the scene and it’s bad for the consumer. Without cash labels and artists can’t buy time off the evil capitalist economy to make wicked tunes. To put it in other words, if we don’t pay for music, more and more artists will be making music only in their spare time away from fulltime bill-paying work. Another impact from reduced revenue is a reduction in money spent on producing albums which unfortunately means more albums will be released in a less than polished state. Is piracy ever justifiable?
One of my arguments for piracy has always been, why should those that can’t afford music, face it, some people can barely afford the roofs over their heads, have to go without? This doesn’t really stack up when you look at all the killer podcast available free of charge, band social networking pages that allow users to stream on demand, and the massive volume of stuff released under creative commons licence or similarly released free of charge (donations are still nice). This sort of approach to finding music is great research to avoid splashing out on albums that may not meet our high standards, another reason often used by downloaders.
The internet has been a double edged sword for the music industry but it has certainly been cutting one way more than the other. I, like many of you, love being able to spontaneously purchase and download music straight from artists or from iTunes but if we don’t stop illegally downloading, quality pickings are going to become scarce. Music is art and art has inherent value, more to some people and less to others but I think the music industry, especially on the independent side, has done a good job of meeting us half way.
PS. KMFDM, I hope there are no hard feelings. I have bought albums both MP3 and CD and merchandise from your online store and will continue to do so as long as you continue to produce awesome music.
JimZombie
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