Another ‘video’

I can’t remember if I already put this one up, but if not, here it is. If so, here it is again.

I’m suddenly quite taken with the idea of putting music on YouTube. Discussed it last week, came to the conclusion that it represented a good way of making SubMachena (or other BlancoMusic material) available to listen to, without having to get into the complicated realm of streaming sites and whether or not they represent a net benefit to artists or not. The only downpoint I can see to YouTube as a promotional platform is that, well, it’s visual. The music is there, but apart from Nachete, the SubMachena songs up there so far, have a bit of artwork providing the visual content, and that’s it. What’s more, the image, as cobbled together by me on iMovie, does wobble around a bit in a manner that makes people a little queasy. Can’t be helped, let’s remember that these ‘videos’ are only supposed to be a promotional tool for the music, not an artistic statement in themselves. I’m still a bit annoyed actually, by the MIA Born Free video, specifically by it’s romanticization of a particular terrorist group whose actions destroyed the cultural, economic, and political landscape of the town and country where I grew up. If you saw the video and recognise what I’m referring to, you’ll know what I mean. If you didn’t catch the bit I’m referring to, or if you can’t figure out what I’m going on about, don’t worry. I’d prefer not to draw any more attention to it anyway. The issue is something to be thought about though. It’s a problem when self-appointed ‘artists’ assign political importance to their ‘statements’ when they don’t take the time or make the effort to educate themselves in the realities of the artistic references they choose to make. It’s truly time that music became the most important part of music videos, if only to avoid ‘event videos’ like MIA’s, which with a single shot trivialise and make illegitimate the sufferings of a very real people – not imaginary ginger-tops being hunted down by imaginary forces, but real people who lost their loved ones.

I am very sorry if this post means absolutely NOTHING to you, reading it. I am clearly a bit pissed off by this, and shouldn’t be putting it on here. Not wanting to identify the bit of the video that’s annoyed me so much doesn’t help either. Look, the point I’m making is that art should be left in the hands of artists, and if it is to have any genuine impact, other than shock-effect, should be left pure and undiluted by extra concerns such as shifting units (of the art in question, or of the music attached to it). To do anything less is to leave complex and sensitive subjects in the muddle-handed grip of people who do not have the intelligence or integrity to treat them with any sort of responsibility. And that’s not good for anyone, least of all the musicians involved.

YouTube

Midi controller, powerbook and keyboard. Sometimes two hands just won’t do it. The morning was spent rearranging furniture and trying to make sense of the kilometers of cables in BlancoMusic HQ. Piano Segundo and SubMachena both use some complicated setups, especially with the dub element of SubMachena. Now at least Robin can get some practise at the art of playing three keyboards at once. All that Czerny and Chopin over the last few months will have helped.

Robin’s got something of a busy time ahead.  Later this month he’s off to Ibiza to record the next Nightmares on Wax album with bandmates George Evelyn and Chris Dawkins. Between now and then there’s the production and recording of Vanito Brown’s album Cambios, plus continuing remixes of BudNubac and SubMachena work. Every once in a while he turns up with a silly grin and a USB stick with a new Piano Segundo track all recorded and ready. Clearly the man has a well-compartmentalized mind.

I’ve been putting music up on YouTube this week, although, to be honest, I haven’t done any today. Previously I’d been reluctant to do so, mainly because it seemed counter-productive to be making music available to listen to on the site without having a decent video to go with it. I’ve changed that approach mainly because it seems ridiculous to have a body of work here on my hard-drive stretching into three-figures’ worth of tracks, and not anywhere else. We are developing a fanbase, and it’s clear that in the new economics of the music business, fans are not likely to wait around indefinitely for new material from the acts they choose to spend their attention on. That seems reasonable fair to me, actually. Artists have rarely had much to do with the ‘lead time’ concept that applied to releases in the old music industry model. Frankly, having an album sitting around gathering dust on a record label’s hard-drive is the last thing that most artists and acts want, and the practice was developed more out of a wish to maximise profitability and returns than anything to do with ‘gauging the zeitgeist’ . Mainly, lead times were about making sure the album you released wasn’t competing with another similar release that might be more tempting to the kind of listeners who only ever buy one or two albums a year anyway. That, plus making sure that all the publicity and advance promotional effort could be co-ordinated to the same date. Doesn’t apply to us, what little promo effort we make for our music, is done on a rolling basis anyway.

So why YouTube? Well, Soundcloud would seem like the obvious option in our position – putting the tracks up there and making them public links for people to hear when they want to. What bothers me about Soundcloud is that it’s a pay-to-listen arrangement. Users get a limited amount of time on their account before they have to buy a membership. It’s a bit of an impediment when you’re hoping people will take a chance on listening to something they’ve not heard before – to expect them to pay for the privilege. This isn’t some huge about-face on our part here at BlancoMusic. We’re still as stubborn as we ever were in our belief that music is a valuable luxury, and that expecting it for free is an insult to the very artists whose efforts go into creating something that will resonate within you. That doesn’t mean that those artists, and us, the label, should have no chance to let people hear the music without committing to a purchase. We’re not entirely without self-awareness here – we can accept that there are some poor misguided, cloth-eared types out there who, gasp, might not actually like our music! And we will endeavour to hunt them down and destroy them, obviously (joke). No, seriously, of course everyone should have the opportunity to hear a record before deciding they want to buy it, it never worked any other way. Still, it just seems that streaming sites, or any other site that charges people a subscription fee to listen to music whilst letting artists and their labels go unpaid for that music (or as near as dammit), break a bond of trust between artist and listener. Both listener and artist feel they are being short-changed, and in fact, they are. For the moment, even though we have no videos made for any of the newer tracks, YouTube seems like a good place to put the music. It’s free for everyone, it demands a certain interaction from the user rather than being something that just goes on in the background and gets ignored, it can be linked to from other sites, embedded into blogs and has a comments facility. Who knows, maybe we’ll even consider going back onto MySpace next!

More from You Tube

Please excuse me today from writing a proper blogpost. We’ve decided that it’s time to start pushing SubMachena a bit, and the uploading process is taking quite a bit of time today. What I’ll do instead of writing, is post an embedded video to ‘Lef’ Handed Shite’, so that if you haven’t heard anything much of SubMachena yet, you’ll have more of an idea of what they’re about. Well, I call it a video, that’s a bit of a glorification. It’s just an image, to go with the music. Anyway, the music’s the important bit. SubMachena are a two-man unit: Robin Taylor-Firth and Rawle Bruce. If you’ve ever heard ‘You’re Not Alone’ by Olive, or even the Tinchy Stryder remake of the tune, you’ll be aware of Robin and Rawle already. The two were members of Olive back when the band formed, and after it split, stayed in touch, recording music with their other band – BudNubac. This track – ‘Lef’ Handed Shite’ was written by Rawle, the bassplayer, and is as big and bassy as you would expect from everything SubMachena do. Hope you enjoy it.

Sometimes you just have to bend.

Some of the rage at mog.com has died a little, giving way to some pretty serious re-thinking here at BlancoMusic. If you missed yesterday’s blogpost, I’ll explain. BlancoMusic made a decision some time ago to withdraw our music from streaming sites, feeling that the scant financial reward recouped from even the most artist-friendly of the services (currently We7) was not worth the dilution of demand that comes from having the product you hope to sell available on demand elsewhere. There are lots of pro-streaming arguments too – it was always a debate. Streaming sites can be used as a means to publicise an act and bring its music to the attention of an audience who might otherwise have missed it. That’s about the crux of it. Fair point. Can’t eat publicity though, and I’ve yet to come across a single act who managed to actually make any revenue from all the whizzbang monetization schemes that are bandied about who hadn’t already built a large following either through gigging relentlessly and expensively; or who hadn’t already established their fanbase before 2001 or so. I’m happy to be proven wrong on this, purely because if there is an example, I’d like to copy exactly what they did. Most of the music 2.0 success stories involve some pretty hefty major label investment at some point in their breakthrough; or some industry-insider stringpulling; or heavyweight pr contacts. Hang on, where was I? Mog.com, yes indeed. Well, after a bit of moaning by me about how Last.fm were ignoring my requests to them to remove our music from their site, someone asked me if I’d checked if the music was on mog.com. I checked, it was, we have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting it off without engaging a California lawyer. It’s annoying.

Anyway, moan moan. I suppose what this post is going to be is the inevitable crumble of our will in the face of reality. If we can’t actually keep our music off streaming sites, it may be time that we abandoned our stubborn policy of trying to do so. We were trying to retain some dignity for our artists by pulling them back from the overactive attention-seeking shoutfest that is the online music marketplace. It seems like a shift in policy is inevitable. Thing is, if we are to do this, it won’t be just a case of letting mog.com and last.fm have he music and hope no-one notices. If we decide to embrace the music.20 models, we’ll do it with as much energy as we can muster, and on as many fronts as possible. Fan funding, pre-release auctions, box-sets full of worthless crap that somehow ‘connects’ us with the fans better than the music can do so alone. Oh yep, we’ll go for all the cliches and invent a couple of our own. Who knows, we may get to the point where it works. We may even get to the point where we don’t feel like a bunch of cynical exploitative hacks, whoring out the beauty and integrity of music for the sake of selling a few thousand ‘limited edition’ polo shirts. Who knows? Who knows?

Here’s a BlancoMusic tune to start with. Topical, if a little dated: http://bit.ly/9aiFDo