What do you think?
For a long time and especially since the release of my “Starksy & Glitch EP” I’ve been getting a lot of emails asking if I could pass the release over to them. In some rare cases I will but more often I don’t. Anyway, it made me think.
Seems like the more successful a record is, the more people turn up trying to get it for free. And that is great, it means they are interested in it, they would like to have it, they would like to listen to it.
But clearly listeners are not aware of the possibilities a single piece of sale can bring to a recording artist. That may be no surprise – how would they know? It’s hardly common knowledge and maybe it doesn’t even have to be. But there’s so many things in life that we get to experience only one aspect of and therefore don’t get to appreciate it completely. Like a party event for instance. Many things to complain about, from the sound quality, through the amount of people that showed up or whether that live-act was more like a laptop DJ set with MIDI controllers to the size of the cloakroom, etc. However, unless someone has actually organised an event themselves, they probably have no idea about the diversity of factors that make or break a club night or series.
Truth is, a purchase can make or break the success of a release. Or it could mean a DJ booking to a city. Or a collaboration with an artist. Or all of those and more.
Either case, it has great potential – probably desired by the fans themselves.
So yea, it made me think. And I was fascinated by the thought that with such small input may come so much impact. Not sure listeners are aware of that.
What do you think?
Beatmassa
I think it’s SOFA KING lame for people to ask for the track, blatantly. Man, I’ve “stolen” my share of music when I didn’t know any better, but one thing is for sure – I didn’t go straight to the artist and say “hey can I hav that track for free to rock a set of mine that you spent hours upon hours to create – that’s just disrespectful. If I were to ask you for a track flat out, it would only be for reasons of promotion, say i wanted to feature it on my site – but I still wouldn’t make the track freely available – I’d let people peep it on my site, but I would feature a buy now link. That’s really all there is to it for me. Courtesy and respect can’t be overlooked when it comes to valuing musicians’ work.