The Opposite of Free
Stop with the single already. Make me an ALBUM. Not 11 shit-songs and an earworm. I want art. I want flow. I want craft. And I WANT to pay for it.
Singles are for casual listeners… a watered-down, comehither billboard, intent on not only getting your attention but manipulating it.
Paraphrasing/quoting Oliver Sacks:
Science dictates that music (a.k.a. singles) specifically designed to hook you in — an “endless repetition” regardless of “the fact that the music in question may be irrelevant or trivial, not to one’s taste, or even hateful — suggests a coercive process,” where music “enter[s] and subvert[s] a part of the brain, forcing it to fire repetitively and autonomously (as may happen with a tic or a seizure).”
Is this what we now require of every song, a calculated brainwash of sound, a “defenseless engraving of music on the brain” (Sacks again) that we literally can’t get out of our minds?
Creepy. And the sure way to mass-produced homogeny.
Oh wait. Kind of like the way radio is now?
Lord knows the last thing I want to hear is a string of singles. Even of my favorite songs. Talk about mentally exhausting.
Think of it like this. The single is a teaser, an aperitif, a taste… a free sample. The ALBUM is the main event, the SUBSTANCE. And albums are for FANS — INVESTORS in music, who stick with you long after the single has wormed its way out. Can you imagine Tattoo You without “Slave?” “Start Me Up” may have gotten you to the table but “Little T & A,” “Black Limousine,” etc. that’s the meat. Yum.
And that’s the model I’m talking about. The model of making ART and selling it because it has VALUE. That’s the model that works because it works for FANS.
Fans GET the album… they embrace the collective idea that music is dynamic; its impact relies on time, place, emotion, mood, memory, presentation, etc., i.e. CONTEXT.
Just think about how many times when you first heard a song, you didn’t like it… but another time, you did. Not exactly accidental. Contextual. And not the kind of thing that happens if you simply play the same single over and over again on YouTube.
But if you put an entire album on replay… you spend time with the songs, you give them room to breathe, you grow to love them. They take on MEANING.
Music surrounded by music that informs it has MORE meaning… the kind of meaning that only a group of songs, purposely arranged and comprising a greater product can create: an all-encompassing audio art-form that is, by its very essence, the bare-bones magnificence of music: a wondrous, sonically shared experience — exactly the kind of thing that fans are willing to pay for.
Because in a world where singles are incessantly everywhere and also free (thereby, inherently valueless) true, artful albums are RARE (thereby, somewhat priceless). And I don’t know about you but I don’t want what everyone else has for free… kind of the same way I feel about extra large, logo-emblazoned T-shirts. Keep ‘em.
But a compendium of great, interesting songs… dead-ringer singles, sleeper hits, introspective soundscapes, covers turned inside-out, indulgent guitar solos (please, bring those back)… that’s what I want. I want to actually hold it in my hand, open up the liner notes and rub my nose in them, inhaling that new-ink-on-paper-smell.
Limited copies. Frame-worthy artwork.
Raise the standard.
Charge me double the price.
© Outlandos MusicTM 2008
Tags: CUT THROUGH THE NOISE, KATE BRADLEY, OUTLANDOS MUSIC —
5/19/08
Categories: CUT THROUGH THE NOISE • KATE BRADLEY • OUTLANDOS MUSIC
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0 Responses to “The Opposite of Free”
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It’s the rare artist or album that deserves this level of attention, but they are indeed treasures when they come along — and totally worth a high price.
[...] that the answer is in fact the opposite of free. The complete opposite. Fucking [...]
Hear! Hear! …I have never been one of the downloading/pay 99¢ a song crowd. In fact, I never understood them.
I NEED to own it, hold it, read liner notes, and see graphics. It is part of an experience, and when I listen to a song I ALWAYS listen to an ALBUM. The whole show.
This generation has lost a lot. They use music as ring tones, and cheap throwaway downloads. They have lost the awe of it. A shame.
I am teaching my kids different. Music is too important.
Thanks for the post.
Tool are good at this.
Propagandhi too.
Soundgarden on vinyl.
NOFX.
Sublime’s massive CD/DVD rarities.
Nirvana same as per Sublime.
I spent three times the amount of money I’d usually spend on a record just to make sure that people would get a hard cover package and 30-page booklet filled with information about the record as well as 17 original artwork, each one representing a song from the album (yes… 17 songs!). I am pretty positive the songs are not crap (to be honest I think they are really cool but I’ll leave that kind of statement to the audience) but still the album sold just at about 300 physical copies. Digital sales are much higher… and P2P downloads too. Sometimes I wish I didn’t spend that money but my artistic side (the one who does not worry about expenses) says: You did what every artist is suppose to.
Great website, btw! Terrific posts.
Greetings from Brazil.
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[...] novelty, quality is going to win out. As Kate Bradley puts it, the “new free” is going to be “the opposite of free,” something so good you’d be willing to buy it at a [...]
[...] there, then, a new free? My feeling is that the new free may be the opposite of free. The complete opposite, a.k.a. expensive. Case in point: the new food. $5 Kashi. $4 for a dozen [...]
Wow. I think I love you. Thank you for writing this blog…