Here’s a Wall Street Journal article by one Jason Fry about the Radiohead album which says, in short, it’s okay for a band like Radiohead to go without a traditional recording contract but this just doesn’t scale down to everyone else. Which is a fair comment even if I don’t particularly like the logic. I was wondering what it was exactly about the argument that stank and then this analogy was given:
Are there lots of bloggers out there hard at work honing their writing, building traffic and creating a community? Absolutely. (Heck, I’m one of them.) What’s the goal 99% of them are striving for? A book deal.
Um, no. To be blunt, sod off. To be less blunt, you’re only thinking about bloggers who think like you. The number of motivations for blogging are as numerous as the number of bloggers out there and falling into bed with a publisher who will treat you as a Christmas novelty gift item before letting you slide out of print is not the only one.* And, to be more prosaic, I’m earning a good living from blogging by, um, blogging. I have no interest in a book deal. I wouldn’t know how to begin to write a book. I write weblogs.
The same, I’d imagine, goes for musicians. Their motivations are many, their goals multifarious and their abilities to earn a living not just restricted to signing with a label. Rather than 99% needing to go the trad route I’d say it’s the inverse. 1% will make it through the mainstream system so let them. As for the rest, there’s a whole world of possibilities out there many of which haven’t been conceived yet. Let’s try and figure them out together.
* This opinion of publishers comes from many years as a bookseller with stock buying powers. It might not be fair but I tell it how I saw it.
link via NMS Newswire, album art via Joey Accordion.
Hear hear!