In case I haven't been hammering my basic point enough lately--here's a post I put up over at Gearslutz. I'm making premium mass culture. My book The Love Artist is the prototype and I'm working on the audio component as we speak. The book is $120. The music will be roughly $10 a song. That me.


The original post was about how lame the MTV video awards were or the current state of music:

MTV and the radio is about as good as free music is going to get. If you want better--it's quite simple--make it yourself (and offer it up for whatever price you desire) or pay someone else to make it. At .99 a download and a relentless tour schedule and a gang of record label bs the only way to make decent money, it's not to difficult to understand that many caring, intelligent, talented adults aren't interested in paying the dues it takes to master the craft.

We have an antiquated view of art being magically divorced from commerce--which is like the pastor at the crumbling church refusing to ask for money or change what he's saying because he doesn't deal with such earthly matters. Ultimately it doesn't matter if he deals with them or not, because they'll deal with him.

Can you imagine running the space program (or even a computer company) on a similar setup as the music industry? With similar job security, working conditions, benefits, retirement and risk/benefit ratios? You'd get nothing (except for possibly some dead astronauts or faulty motherboards)--but you wouldn't be surprised. (You'd probably be on your way to Aruba!)

With the money so tight we get great music that--suprise--is either very angry about the existing business structure or very concerned with making money. Or a marketing scheme. We get what we pay for. Name another field where someone will labor harder to make something superlative and absorb the extra cost so that it will cost the same as the lower quality competition? Are they still in business? And would more or less individuals attracted to that field with that kind of competition and inability to differentiate your quality?

Ironically, if we really cared about music more than commerce, we'd be happy to reward artists for the radical risk it takes to produce something of merit. And if we really wanted better music and better artists we'd be begging iTunes to raise their prices on the good stuff! And in doing so, ironically, we'd generate a whole slew of artists who probably wouldn't adapt either an anti- or pro-money pose. Because they wouldn't have to appeal to such a huge audience to make money--so they'd be able to afford more subtle distinctions.

Nothing that five or ten years and $2, $5 and $10 songs couldn't cure. Us artists have plenty of work to do as well. But there's way too many folks out here with tons of money and no decent music, movies, magazines or TV to consume for it not to happen eventually. Sooner or later we'll either start buying what we want or pay the dues to make it.