Red Information Manifesto

Music Application

i mentioned this in some follow-up post, but i want to focus on it. here's what i think:

record labels like sony, BMG, etc, want us to believe that they're an absolute necessity -- that without them, "the music dies" (as say artists like lars ulrich when they decry p2p). this is wrong.

to illustrate, painters don't enjoy the support of big business, big money "painting labels"; at the very most they might have patrons or sponsors. but artists, and i'm of course including musicians here, don't require the promise of profit-monies to produce and distribute their artwork. musicians will make music and encourage its consumption even at a financial loss -- music is important in and of itself. why is money the blue ribbon, the first-place trophy, awarded to artwork?

the only end-result i can foresee from the death of the profit-centered record label (individual musicians or groups will retain small "record labels", or whatever they choose to call them) is that musicians and their audiences will become more dependent on concerts, will finance and control their own production, and will distribute their own records. the only things that will be missing will be mass-marketing, which only leads to the sort of mass-produced, lowest-common-denominator bubblegum that has flooded the market. the relationship between audience and musician will be allowed to develop and flourish in a way that's been severely restricted in modern times.

to think that music, and our appreciation of it, is somehow dependent on big business or even profit, is preposterous, and frankly amounts to typical, western-style capitalistic propaganda.

i fully support p2p distribution -- it's a method of exposure, and a very effective one at that. it hurts corporate labels, and not musicians. art should never be focused around money; it universally leads to the corruption and dumbing-down of the given artwork. with the destruction of record labels and profit-centered music, the consuming public will only have to more actively seek it out, and be less dependent on blitzkrieg marketing. only good can come from this -- the overall Quality of music would increase.

furthermore, this destruction is inevitable -- information technology will continue to outstrip marketing "technology" at a greater and greater pace (see: technological singularity), and the impossibility of restricting information and "intellectual property" will destroy the current structure of profiteering record labels -- it's just a matter of time, and public consciousness.

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