Longing for the day ...

Brian Eno's spot on ... sort of

Found Hypebot's extract from an interview with Brian Eno, in which he outlines a "Recipe For New Music Business Success". He makes is sound very simple when he talks up the virtues of monetising the aspects of music that are more difficult to copy.

So you turn your compositions into recordings and turn the recordings into packages of artwork that cannot be duplicated digitally ... makes sense. Except that you're no longer a musician, and the music is just being used to sell something else ... it's no longer the point of your efforts ... you're effectively just writing jingles for someone else's product.

And I'm particularly interested in the short-sightedness of Eno suggesting that this recipe allows "visual artists, designers, animators and film-makers" to make a living. I'd have thought a guy like Eno would have the vision to see that all of these are just Nielsen's Law away from suffering the same fate as digitally didstributed music ...

I also accept some of the commenters' point of view that the kind of thing Eno describes is waaaay easier for an act that already has a following than it is for an act that trying to build a following ...

This is almost as transparent as the logic that suggests that acts need to generate their income from "scarce" commodities in an abundant value ecology - well, duh!!