Written by Peter Doran for peterdoran.com. Sign up for newsletter & get free music here.
Some thoughts on abundance vs scarcity, & the values of recorded and live music in the digital age:
____________________________________________________________________________________________
This week I spent a little bit of time with a Russian photographer called Sergey Sergeev. I discovered his work online earlier this year and immediately fell in love with it. Sergey is passionate about traditional photographic technique and processes, and tends to avoid the digital world. We did a shoot together yesterday morning in the place where I made my new album "Outlines". The plan was to get some nice photos for the album cover / packaging / booklet etc. I feel it went well, but we won't see anything until the pictures are developed. This is a strange sensation in a world where we're used to getting things instantaneously! I look forward to the results - the light was good, and I trust his eye...
Sergey spoke with boyish excitement about the magic and the science of this old-style photography. I lack the knowledge to write about it properly, but it sounds really interesting. He develops his own pictures using old-world chemical processes, there is no ink or printers involved and because of this, every one is truly unique and special. This stands in stark contrast to the world we live in now, where so much is digital and can be replicated exactly without any loss of quality. All of this got me thinking about value, abundance, scarcity and worth. There are parallels between music and photography, and both are art-forms that have been affected in the digital age.
Dear Peter,
I do share your thoughts and agree on the philosophical approach a lot. Although I belong to a generation of people who could do records only if they could actually play and were worth entering a studio ( as you luckily are ), I quickly learned to cope with the creative business chaos we currently survive, and I like that you see the subject on a both modern and mature angle, respecting music history and embracing the new trends. So, for me, the best we could do is to continue in creating art, until time and culture suggest a natural development of today’s models ! Singles are fun, to express a moment in time, a creative window. But I like albums more. They could be a soundtrack of a journey, a book of memories. They stay longer with us. Ask all your fans what they would pay for an album. It could help to decide…
My Dear Duke!
Thanks for your feedback, and for taking the time to read 🙂
It’s pretty much chaos out there in digital land for sure, and my thoughts on all this stuff change a lot from day to day. We must indeed keep on creating art regardless of the model or distribution channels. We must keep going. Initial feedback from friends and fans seem to be that artists should charge a reasonable amount but give “super-fans” the option to pay more if they wish…
My thoughts about Name-your-price (starting at zero) is that perhaps that this will make the music easier to spread and will therefore be heard by more people. But of course I could be wrong. Maybe Quality spreads regardless of price. It’s an interesting debate. Another musician friend of mine suggested the free model is good provided it’s on a time basis… ie you make certain music available for free but put an end-point on it.
Who knows… The important thing is the music, everything else is just kicking around ideas 🙂
ps The album format is still king for me!