I’m pretty late to its release, but I just downloaded the new Brad Sucks album “Out Of It”. It’s brought me back to a sort of new line of thought on music and how it is consumed this day and age.
I hate the “indie” label, because for whatever reason it’s now used by hipster douche valves as a genre label, instead of just factually stating that an artist operates without being signed to a big name label. (How odd, “indie” used to mean “independent”.)
However, I do enjoy a lot of independent acts. From chiptunes, to nerdcore, there’s a very vast array of music out for consumption that’s far easier to obtain these days.
Shit, I got “G.A.M.3” on my iPod, the third collection of songs from people on GAF. It has no real reason to exist, but there have been some pretty choice cuts in the collections as far as electronica goes.
Jonathan Coulton (JoCo) is another artist I’ve been checking out a lot lately, and he’s another good example of a guy that “gets it”. When you visit his site, you can look at his entire collection of songs, and listen to any of them in full right from the site. Fairly priced bundles are available, or you can snip single tracks from the site for a buck each. Or, if you just stole all his music, he has a tab for donations in case a person liked the stolen product enough to support it.
Brad Sucks I think really has it down. When he first launched his site, his CD “I Don’t Know What I’m Doing” was up as a free download. More impressive though, was that when the album was ready for a real professional like release, he still left it up to download for free, leaving it up to the fans to decide if they’ll buy the MP3’s, the album itself, or just download the MP3’s for no cost.
This also applies to the new album he’s released. Better yet, the price for those who want to buy is completely up to them. You can buy all the MP3’s for a couple of bucks, or chip in 30 bucks to support the artist. Keeping focus on fans, you can also download the source material for all of Brad’s stuff as well, which has spawned a lot of remixes of his tracks.
This sort of community focus for music I find very comforting. Music, for most of the 80’s/90’s had become pretty faceless. Napster obviously shook things up quite a bit, (before selling out) but that impact has remained.
Contrary to popular belief, the impact wasn’t that people could steal music for free. If you look at the Pirate Bay’s website, you’ll see people will steal anything over the Internet these days if they can. The true impact was that between music itself and the user, and it’s why someone like Jonathan Coulton can amass a cult of nerdy fans to bring half monkey half pony dolls to his shows. (Not to mention all the awesome “Re: Your Brains” videos from PAX.)
Truth is, that sort of faceless bland development for music doesn’t work as well anymore, which is why artists on major labels these days aren’t presented as artists, but product. No one can listen to rap these days and consider it actual music, but there’s a ton of indie hip hop around that carries a far more “pure” spirit than any mainstream shit.
Music these days has entered a sort of weird flux. Television I imagine is next, (Hulu.com is so awesome) but music seems to be first on the internet’s chopping block of shit that’s due for a major cultural overhaul.
But most of all, the indie scene shouldn’t just be viewed as some measure of elitist snobbery that shuns the mainstream simply for the sake of it. The breadth of content out there, and it’s levels of pointlessness and obscurity and style ensures that there really is something for everyone these days.
Only about 4 years ago, I used to snub ANYTHING hip hop related, assuming in my head that the modern rap/crunk scene was all it really had to offer. Now I adore hip hop, simply because it’s actually possible to find so much of it that can appeal to me.
In fact, prowling different opinions and looking over You Tube and such to check out different artists is something I do nightly these days.
I’ve got no time to make you believe me
Set in the sun for someone to leave me.
I’ve got so much time to take it easy
Now that I am on my own.
