A Reply to David Lowery - From The Neos
It seems that you are of the old guard, an esteemed academic of music no less. A person willing to sit on the sideline and attack the younger generations, so we swear back in your face. You seem to think that as music fans young people are wronging artists by downloading free music, you are naive. Mr Lowery you are blind to see the larger philosophical picture of the move away from conventional record sales - for what is taken away and forever lost is sometimes given back in spades.
The internet has given us a platform to convey our music to the world in a time were corporations are monsters in all markets. Apple alone has $500 billion dollars in a bank account and your worrying about the kids downloading free music. You fail to understand and see the love that makes one download 11,000 songs onto a hard rive, you also fail to see the hardships faced by young people to buy music. At a time when people are struggling to afford a mortgage, petrol, food and basic healthcare music is a bastion of hope and happiness. The artists is secondary to the beauty they give their listeners, for better or worse. Whether it is right or wrong downloading music is thus irrelevant for the sense of pleasure and joy still permeates through the true medium of audio.
This is in no way to say that artists and record companies do not deserve their just deserts but to stew in your hateful quagmire, is to fail to see the vast changes unfolding within society. Money has been digitised into credit, priceless paintings are sold online as prints, 3d printers stand to revolutionise the building industry, the internet has outsourced all conventional labour value, the Chinese people have been exploited into non-existence, the list is endless. But you are blind to this Lowery, for music is only the minute particular in the vast ocean of the universal. I believe that objects in our society have shifted into the sanctuary of the free world.
A world in which money is not relevant. Did you not see that the U.S federal government has no money, states are on the verge of bankruptcy, millions of civil servants have been furloughed and yet your continual moan is heard in the media. You whine about your pitiful royalties dwindling. In many ways you are a nostalgic artist unformed, not yet realized as a musician. You want to be upheld as the musicians champion, the champions musician, a person of supreme status who fights for artist revenue and corporate backed enterprise, these days are gone.
To long have corporations raped, manipulated, extracted and exploited the greats. These being the true artists of sound that have given our worlds sound and incandescent colour. The very music that is symbolic of the human existence and greatest potential has been tainted for to long. In vast contrast Mr Lowery your music is a shadow or trace of the genuine talisman. However, do not be unkind to yourself many fall short of greatness in music potential myself included. But you scream musicians have been treated unjust and we all know that you are right. Even I have burnt potentially 10 albums worth of music. However, the vast amount occurring while below the age of 12. From this statement can you begin to see that you are directly attacking the children of younger generations. Your hatred and discrimination is produced from the confusion of the world which is continually born again and ever changing, I bid you to look out your window. So that you stop your relentless attack upon the poor and the defenceless who's right is much greater than yours being their freedom and liberty to choose to purchase music.
But why do you despair Lowery for when we grow as individuals and groups, society as a whole we come to realise the importance of buying music. For even the smallest child grows up as you have done and will in turn chose to support the true artists who are the majority, the indie artist, yourself - the ones that are free and dependent on the virtue of others. But if major labels disintegrate and no one ever buys a record again all the better, it is the peoples choice - music will not die it will always carry on in a more purified form removed from money. Perhaps the future is already upon us for some of the most beautiful records in the last year were given freely to me like "AcidRap" by Chance The Rapper. If you were to ask my vision of music I honestly believe there are two options. The first being that the destiny of the greatest music in the future will be freely shared by all nations, worlds and galaxies (technology permitting) it's creator to become the most revered individual in the cosmos for an instant. The second option being the blind return to purchasing music forever so artists get their 20%. I choose the first because I imagine a future world were a song like "Gangham Style" is free and everyone is partying like Rockstars on Mars.
The Neo-Kalashnikovs
Dis-claimer: David Lowery is the Man and this is just bouncing ideas!!! he's a man doing great things and I have the utmost respect for him :)
