I’ve spoken about Arrington before. It’s no secret that I don’t like the guy. More than that, I think he’s an uneducated fool who got rich with his blog by getting lucky with his niche and his timing. My previous description of Michael Arrington was the stupidest man in the blogosphere. Some people might see his success as a measure of his intelligence. However, one read of his blog, particularly his writing about any creative industry, will prove my point.
Of course, it is his insecurity about any form of creativity, and in particular his incessant portrayal of musicians as slack jawed malingerers, that fuels my anger. His mission to somehow convince the world that recorded music has no value and should be given away for free makes my blood boil. I’m a perfectly reasonable man, as many can attest, but when Arrington starts jibber jabbering about the music industry I feel the urge to punch him. Partly out of anger, partly in the hope it will bring him to his senses.
With all this in mind it is with great pleasure that I write this post today. Big Arena Records, the wordpress based independent record label that I introduced back in April is going from strength to strength. Traffic is climbing slowly but surely, the podcast is being downloaded regularly by growing audience and today we have released our first album, Electric Baby Grand by Enormous. The album bucks the give it away for free trend and is currently selling for a very honest $9.99. 100% of the profits go to the artists themselves. This is easy to do since Big Arena Records is run by the artists themselves. The album is unencumbered by any sort of DRM since Big Arena Records prefers to trust people rather than treat them like criminals. It is our belief that enough people will be happy to pay a fair price for an eleven track album of high quality, original independent music as long as they are sure that the artists are being rewarded for their hard work and creativity. Real music fans shouldn’t be punished with crazy DRM schemes. If you buy this album and want to make a copy for your car, for your iPod, for your minidisc player, or for whatever device or format you want, you are both able and encouraged to do so.
And it’s working. The album is selling. It’s only been online for one hour and it is already selling.
Michael Arrington is wrong. Music does have value and is valued by music lovers all over the world.
I have always believed that independent content producers of all kinds, musicians, writers, visual artists, etc. etc. are better off promoting their own material via blogs than wasting time courting the industry middle men. If a fledgling wordpress driven record label can successfully sell it’s debut album, using nothing but a blog and a podcast, for $9.99 in an industry that is beleaguered by misinformation and apathy then I’m confident that my beliefs are routed in truth and fact.
To see how we did it visit the blog and listen to the podcast (I guarantee episode five will make you cry). The blog design is still being tweaked and played with as I continue to strive for a unified theme for all of our blogs. Indeed, you will see parts of Upstart Blogger still in place at Big Arena Records since the base theme is identical.
If you like independent pop music then you will almost certainly enjoy Electric Baby Grand. Available now at Big Arena Records for $9.99.
Of course music has value, and is valued by music lovers. It’s only undervalued by those with short sighted souls;)
Michael Arrington sounds like the type of person who answers “ahhh I just listen to whatever is on the radio” when asked “who’s your favourite band?”.
Which does mean he wasen’t loved as a child… or the ‘love’ was unwanted.
And now to my favourite sentence of all time:
“Without music, life would be a mistake”.
What do you think of the whole free music thing though?
I was in a band up until recently and we weren’t really set on making money off it since we weren’t big at all but I have been following the developmets of Nine Inch Nails
they released 40 tracks in this thing they called Ghosts and the music was under the creative commons licence, so you could use it in things like your podcast.
That wasn’t really an album though, all the tracks were ambient music and the like but then they released THE SLIP which is their new album, completely free and in various formats like flac and even I think they had a wav version.
I was in awe that any band would be that open with their music and I really repect them for it. What do you guys think about that.
Talking to my best friend about this we decided that we’d really like to release any of the music that we write for free.
Just to clarify I am all for bands making money from their music and they really should but, I say fuck record labels and I fully agree, cut out the middle-man and just release it by yourself.
Let me know what you guys think about that kinda stuff
ps: check out these sites for info on the NIN stuff
http://nin.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Inch_Nails
I remember growing up during one of the most musically gifted gurus of Indian classical music. Among them was Ustaad (Teacher) Bismillah Khan. He was a Muslim and Islam forbids playing instruments or likening them with any reverence.
Ustaad Bismillah Khan once quoted - “If music is haraam (sacrilege) go do more sacrilege, do more sacrilege and even more sacrilege.”
When technological inventions get antiquated a year or two from its production, a Violin, a Guitar or any other instrument will survive humanity through its present and future gimmicks.
Find a human with no love for good music and I will find one with no soul.
Great post. Good stuff!
Totally agree with you, just deleted my RSS to TC, and added one for here! Keep up the good work!