Saul Williams’ new Trent Reznor produced album comes out tomorrow – for free! Read what they had to say about it and the stateof the music industry over at New York Magazine. My favorite bit re: OiNK -
Trent ‘ They’re not stealing it because they’re going to make money off of it; they’re stealing it because they love the band. I’m not saying that I think OiNK is morally correct, but I do know that it existed because it filled a void of what people want.’
I think this is one of the most important issues at the moment – if you don’t give your audience or consumers what they want – they’ll go elsewhere – FACT.
Whilst I hear all of that, and there is a lot of truth in it (DJ Rupture has an interesting take on it-http://www.negrophonic.com/2007/defending-the-pig-oink-croaks/), I also think it was a pretty disingenuous plan on MR. Williams part, and I say that as a fan. It feels like everyone is now jumping on the Radiohead dick a little, and as for all that BS that Williams spouted on the Niggy site, it is a little juvenile, slagging off the record labels as slavemasters-who bankrolled his record? Who pays his tour support? There is definitely room to cut out the middleman but I think it’s a pretty flawed take on things when bigger established artists (who rely on merch and live revenue more than record sales) say it’s possible to bypass The Man-without said Man they wouldn’t have got to their penthouse suite in their ivory towers..
Yeah dude I hear you – I mean – Saul has always been a bit overly spoken you know – I don’t really know how racist capitalism is, artists get trodden on and ripped off, its not just black artists – and of course the more leftfield people get locked out of the industry, or the upper echelons of industry and end up on smaller independent labels that are staffed and run by people that get paid a pittance right? So yeah I hear you on that.
However I’m into this whole DIY movement – think back to the 70’s and the whole punk thing – imagine if they’d had myspace, facecrack, e-music etc etc and so on?! Interesting to see whether the model can really work for smaller artists – I mean Enter Shikari did it right?