Wilco on P2P, Digital Music and the Internet

Saint Aardvark writes "As if Wilco wasn't the coolest band in existence anyway, Wired has an interview with them about their relationship with P2P, the Internet, and their fans. For example, they were contacted by fans who'd downloaded A Ghost Is Born before it was released. Lead singer Jeff Tweedy explains, 'They wanted to send money to express solidarity with the fact that we'd embraced the downloading community. We couldn't take the money ourselves, so they asked if we could pick a charity instead -- we pointed them to Doctors Without Borders, and they ended up receiving about $15,000.' Many other choice quotes make this a fascinating read."

Comments

Lost Sales?

[fembots]

Selling entertainment is like selling perishable fruit, you need to do it while it's still fresh and desirable.

For example, I quite like Scissor Sisters' "Take Your Mama", so I paid for the CD and listened to it. But I must admit you can only listen to one song for so many times until you're sick of it. So now the enjoyment from this song is long gone, but I have already paid $20 for this now-known-as piece of plastic and song that I no longer enjoy.

I believe any potential "lost sales" are from people who, on one hand, don't want to pay for the music, but on the other, want to enjoy that particular music.

Will this be considered "Lost Sales" if someone told you:
"Nah, this shitty movie is only worth watching it once, why would I pay for the DVD/Movie?".

This person could pay for the DVD/Movie and watch it once, or download it from the Internet and watch it once. Either way this person got one unit of enjoyment out of this, but it's not quite the same to capitalist.

Re:Anyone else see 'em at the Orpheum...

[(54)T-Dub]

I did hear an interesting piece on npr talking about the 'Numbers Stations' phenomena. Appearently they got the name for their albumn "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" from a CD compliation of these number stations.

Article's on fark.com too

[EZmagz]

Just got done reading the interview, and it's nice to see that some musicians are still pretty grounded and down to earth. By far my favorite quote in the article is this:

WN: Your critics might say that it's easy for you to say that, given that you're already a commercial success.

Tweedy: I'm grateful that I've sold enough to have a house, take care of my kids and live decently. But that's a gift, not an entitlement.

Those last three words blew me away. Although I'm not a huge Wilco fan, I definitely appreciate where they're coming from. To me at least, they embody what a True Musician consists of. Somebody who plays music for the sake of making music. Somebody who if they make enough money playing at clubs and hawking CDs to make a living, then GREAT! But if not, they'll still be playing on the weekends and at nights when they're done with their 9-to-5.

Now contrast that with Britney Spears or Ashley Simpson. Think they'd be singing in their garage if their "music" career never took off? Fuck no. Since they only care about entertaining and not making music, they'd probably be just another coked-out stripper on the LA Strip, telling you how they're going to make it big and be somebody between lapdances and serving you a $10 cocktail.

Regardless, it's glad to know there's still a few bands out there who are in it for the love.