while lamenting the advent of the mp3 and the download counterculture people often talk of the excitement that they experienced after saving up all their pocket money as a child, running to the record store and buying the latest hit album, rushing home as they couldn't wait to play it. i vaguely remember a similar feeling when buying music but the more vivid memory is the first time that i realised that napster existed.
i suddenly had the ability to listen to any song that i wanted without having to pay for it. you start to think that you are winning, cheating the system, these guys are famous enough anyways. The excitement came as the download started, and then went on for 30 minutes, i'd get impatient and start previewing the song before it had finished, giving myself a couple of seconds more each time i listened to it.
today it doesn't take any time at all, if i have my mobile phone i can instantly listen to any song i want, instantly. music is on tap and has no physical value. a subscription fee now means that i'm not breaking the law anymore. where this money goes, i have no idea. in the same way i don't know where the 500 odd pound that was taken out of my pay cheque for tax goes. i've read articles that say that spotify has yet to make a profit, that artists only get a tiny percentage of money per stream of music. someone must be making money, they just have not admitted it.
around the same time i started downloading music i also started playing, i've since tried to pick up as many instruments as i can and have been making music in some form since 2003 with the last two years making music completely by myself.
i could not tell you the amount of money that i've spent buying instruments and amps and pedals or the amount of time i've spent recording overdubs, high hat loops, backwards guitar riffs and reverse reverb but I have made approximately ten pounds back from the sale of two physical albums, one sent to germany the other to america with one given out to a friend.
for all the music i make i have given the option to pay for it but also have it available for free. to date i've had around 300 downloads with about 2000 plays. because i play by myself i rarely promote myself or play any live gigs, when i do the audience are about as confused as to what i'm doing on stage as i am. fumbling with loop pedals is something that i've never seen on stage before and to a crowd in a biker pub in south england dreampop is not a genre they are to familar with.
i post my music on bandcamp, soundcloud, and occasionally youtube while also posting on my personal facebook page. when i do post the first person to like it is normally my mother, then a few other faces will pop up, some more surprising than others. It then disappears from people's news feeds into the infinite depths of the internet to be replaced by the latest internet meme (42 likes)
i think that there should be a new way for people, like me who want to make music regardless of if they make money from it or not to be able to put their art out onto a place on the internet where it can be promoted and archived and is accessible to anyone in the world. i don't think this place currently exists.
i will continue to do a job that i hate for the sole reason of then having the means to be able to keep creating. i will do this for as long as is physically possible. it is essentially two jobs, with one being paid in monetary terms and the other with a more creatively gratifying feeling. ideally i'd have a job where both of them were the same job.
when i complain to my friends about my job, they ask if i'm looking for another but they are missing the point. i could sit in any office in the world and would still feel the need to use my time to create art. so when you do create something and it isn't immediately recognised as being of merit you feel disillusioned, however even after spending over a year writing and rerecording over and over and over again only for it to be released to 6 likes on facebook i still want to create. i want to better myself and i'm going to start straight away by listening to new music, using those influences and creating something new following my experiences. i might even play live with a real band.
i'd like to think that i appreciate the effort that goes into the music i listen to but i mostly am just in awe that a group of people were able to create something beautiful. i'm still yet to do that myself.
i value music and i think that you should too.
origamiaround
amandla
gamechangershow
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
