I've been suffering with a nasty Finnish cold-bug this week so I've been looking at other people's creative efforts rather than doing much creating of my own.
I managed to stop coughing and sniffing long enough to respond to a couple of very good blog posts from Steve Lawson, in one of which he drew on Andrew Dubber's experiences of the "Is This It?" conference in Helsinki, while in the other he looked at the role of record companies in the current musical climate. In both posts he claimed that musicians were better placed than ever before to get their music heard.
I instinctively agree with this idea, but to back up my instincts and to get things clear in my head I drew this quick mind-map:
It's a fairly broad sketch and is by no means exhaustive, (I know for example that there are many more things on the "ways of communicating" side), but I found it a good way to identify those areas of a musician's life in which he or she can be truly independent.
Firstly a quick look at the motivational side of the map; the reasons why we make music:
Desire to express/create - I'd hope that chief amongst these is the desire to express ourselves and to be creative. This is why most of us make music, isn't it?
Money - There's definitely nothing wrong with making money from music, although money is perhaps more of an enabler than a motivation - it's nice to make enough money to make music without having to do other things, but I think most musicians would make music either way.
Fame - I think fame as a motivating factor gets a bad press; Kate Winslet can't have been the only child to make imaginary Oscar acceptance speeches, and I doubt those of us who played tennis rackets in the mirror were dreaming of a regular wedding-band g... The lucky few apart though, most of us have to put aside this idea of fame in its basest form, but I think we all still want recognition in some sense, and there's nothing wrong with that feeling.
In any case, the main point on the motivation side is that all three factors can be satisfied by an immediate relationship between a musician and their listeners - there's no need for any intermediaries, e.g. record companies, publicists, music industry theorists, etc.
Now on the "ways of communicating" side of the map I think it's fairly clear how these items don't need intermediaries either. These days we can record music virtually for free; we can get it online with no upfront payments; we can set up a website for very little; we can press our own CDs cheaply and sell them on our websites or via companies like CD Baby; if we have success doing this then we can find a distributor to take on our music; we can play live, and if we're good enough, we can teach.
Any money we do make from the results of these activities can be paid to us directly, based on agreements we've freely and consciously entered into.
So both in our motivations to create music and in our ways of communicating it we can be truly independent agents.
To be clear, when I say we don't need intermediaries I'm not saying that there shouldn't be other people involved in our music-making. We might create the music itself with other people, we might have web-designers or booking agents, we might have distributors or promoters, we might even, whisper it softly, have a record company... The key thing is that these people shouldn't be in between us and the audience. They should work with us or for us, to help us to create and communicate, to help us to reach more people, to help us to express ourselves through music.
If they're not doing those things then we don't need them!
OK, I'm going to get back to the Lemsips (and I don't mean the American vocal group from the 30s...)
Chris
Leave a Comment