From Valet to Entrepreneur: a Revolution of the Capitalist Composer
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- Date Submitted: 11/25/2010 03:48 PM
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From Valet to Entrepreneur: A Revolution of the Capitalist Composer
One of the biggest wake-up calls of my career was when I saw a record contract. I said, 'Wait - you sell it for $18.98 and I make 80 cents? And I have to pay you back the money you lent me to make it and then you own it? Who the **** made that rule? Oh! The record labels made it because artists are dumb and they'll sign anything' - like I did. When we found out we'd been released from their recording contract it was like, 'Thank God!'… It was incredibly liberating… (Trent Reznor Urges Musicians to Ditch Labels, Contact Music News)
Trent Reznor warns through his cautionary tale, and his use of colorful language; the recording industry is a capitalist institution that can leave distaste in the mouths of many aspiring musicians. New information regarding a digital revolution has introduced musicians to home recording technology, social networking web sites, and file sharing leaving many artists wondering why they ever rented their labor to corporations in exchange for bad memories. Indeed, the music industry is experiencing a paradigm shift in which the composer is placed in the shoes of a capitalist for the first time as a self represented performer capable of mass repetition. This new paradigm suggests that musicians can independently record, promote, distribute, and sell their own music without being victimized in the spiraling effect of capitalism caused by artist royalty agreements. Once it is made clear that the current capitalists of the record industry depend on the artist’s original compositions to generate profit, servant musicians will break free of their contracts to take back their labor power, and control of the means of production. By adjusting their creative and economic methods to embrace the expanding technological environment, the modern musician can finally account for their own wages.
Noise, by Jacques Attali suggests that a similar transition, “from the musician-valet to the...
One of the biggest wake-up calls of my career was when I saw a record contract. I said, 'Wait - you sell it for $18.98 and I make 80 cents? And I have to pay you back the money you lent me to make it and then you own it? Who the **** made that rule? Oh! The record labels made it because artists are dumb and they'll sign anything' - like I did. When we found out we'd been released from their recording contract it was like, 'Thank God!'… It was incredibly liberating… (Trent Reznor Urges Musicians to Ditch Labels, Contact Music News)
Trent Reznor warns through his cautionary tale, and his use of colorful language; the recording industry is a capitalist institution that can leave distaste in the mouths of many aspiring musicians. New information regarding a digital revolution has introduced musicians to home recording technology, social networking web sites, and file sharing leaving many artists wondering why they ever rented their labor to corporations in exchange for bad memories. Indeed, the music industry is experiencing a paradigm shift in which the composer is placed in the shoes of a capitalist for the first time as a self represented performer capable of mass repetition. This new paradigm suggests that musicians can independently record, promote, distribute, and sell their own music without being victimized in the spiraling effect of capitalism caused by artist royalty agreements. Once it is made clear that the current capitalists of the record industry depend on the artist’s original compositions to generate profit, servant musicians will break free of their contracts to take back their labor power, and control of the means of production. By adjusting their creative and economic methods to embrace the expanding technological environment, the modern musician can finally account for their own wages.
Noise, by Jacques Attali suggests that a similar transition, “from the musician-valet to the...