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With more time and thought and a desire to review, rewrite and amend, I might just be able to explain to myself, and even others, why arguments over music downloading jar like a spanner in the clockworks of my noggin.

I can just about be bothered to spell check any blog but proof reading is usually beyond my levels of frustration. This is not a concentration problem, I am not open to distraction when writing.  Instead it’s a belief that what is written as first draft contains enough in it to suffice and that further attempts to polish may shine certain areas of any argument to the detriment of style. I do not think in neatly constructed sentences nor readable info-bursts of blah, reminiscent of some hideous celebrity magazine bite sized chunk of gossip that is so unchallenging to eye and mind that it can be consumed by anyone with a reading age of six years old.

The above paragraph being
an example of my constant
meandering, talking, taking
a tangent, walking down the side
streets of a stream of conciousness
away from the original
destination. Which was, again?

Ah, ok, um, well…

Music/Free music/Paid for music/Art in general/Blogging

Major Record Labels = Bad

Indie Record Labels = Good/Better

Paying for Downloads = What are you actually buying? Is there any value to it once you have bought it? What would it’s resale price be?

Buying CDs/Vinyl/Tapes/Product = There are limited resources on this planet, don’t you know, why do you need to own something tangible?

Tangible Product = The fetishism of rock and roll/music – esp. limited/special edition releases – the thrill of consumerism.

Downloads free/paid for – How long will these last? How much does it cost to store them? Will the format you have still work in 5 years time? 10 years time?

Free the Music! = People seem to think that everyone else owes them far too bloody much + where did this idea that everything should be free come from?

New bands = Past practises of bands getting signed by A&R are dieing out, self promotion is replacing record label plugging. Are the next generation of successful bands/artists therefore more likely to be brilliant PR specialists as opposed to great artists?

Established Artists = Taking More Control over their own music which they can only do because they are established. Less money going to record labels means less money for greedy record executives. Also means less money for signing new bands. Also means record labels less likely to take chances on new talent.

Image > Mystique = we know everything about a band before we have heard anything by them. Information leads us to new music. We hear less new music ‘unexpectedly’.

Bands claim downloading for free is wrong = Bands assume that everyone who downloaded their music would have bought it and didn’t go on to buy it.

Bands claim downloading for free is great = Bands scared of looking out of date and out of touch with their fans. Bands keen to establish an internet-friendly-web.2-brand

More must follow…

Thoughts?