This morning I read another blog called Demonbaby. I stumbled upon it via a blog/article on CNet. What caught my eye is the prediction of the eminent death of the record labels and the desire to take down the RIAA. Of course it’s bit of the same old same old that’s been being bandied about since the days of Napster 1.0. However there’s an interesting twist in the demonbaby blog post. It comes from someone who has worked on the inside of the major label system. Someone who actually knows the inner workings. Additionally he gives a very compelling argument for his viewpoint.
There is one thing I don’t agree with though. He wants a boycott of things like iTunes. Why don’t I want a boycott of iTunes or Amazon? Well, they are a fantastic way of leveling the playing field for an artist such as myself or even my pick for today, Jeff. Granted, I understand his reasoning in that he doesn’t want you to support the major labels at all. However, I do know that in the not too distant future even my stuff should be on iTunes DRM free (I don’t know the time frame but it’s in the works). Thus, I would put a stipulation on that boycott, buy from artists you know are not tied to a major label. Unfortunately that means more research on part of the listener. I do agree with many of his points.
One thing I know I will experiment with is similar to the recent Radiohead release. However, I will go the extra step of likely doing it as a full CD quality version on the download. I would hope that fans would be willing to spend the time for the download of it provided it comes with the artwork, and that they’d feel compelled to pay/donate for the effort of full CD quality and not an MP3 or FLAC or some other lossy or lossless type file. I really do mean full fledged WAV files.
As you may know if you’re a long time reader of the blog, or you’ve spent a bit of time traveling back through it recently, then you’d know that Jeff is a good friend of mine. He’s been around the business for quite a while. I learned a lot from him. He gave me some courage to sing. He prodded me along in listening to instruments when I was writing a song. He expanded my world in terms of the genres of music I listened to. Lots of people follow Jeff’s career. To me, he’s my good friend Jeff. That’s all. He’s been really as of late so we don’t see each other all that often anymore.
Jeff’s not on a major label. So you can safely be by his side and purchase from iTunes and such to support him. Do it!