RTP-area local music and culture

[evankrowe <evankrowe AT gmail.com>]

Same thing happened here.  Didn't seem mean-spirited at all.  Unfortunate 
timing on the server's part, but I had the same thought, which I think is 
justified: "Fuck all y'all!  Hey, would you like to help pay for my record?"

I actually assumed at first that the Kickstarter email was from a long time 
ago, too.  Upon seeing that it was new, my first thought was "Really?  People 
are still trying to fund plain old band releases with Kickstarter?  What year 
is it?"

Your band wants to put out a record and (maybe) sell it?  You pay to make the 
record.  Then you (maybe) sell it.  It's not particularly complicated.

It's worked that way for a long time, because things like recording gear, 
rent/mortgage of a facility, tape and/or hard drives, engineers' time and 
talent, packaging, and replication of the final format cost money.  If you 
need to reach a tipping point reliant on others' interest and willingness to 
pay to fund the record, I think you might not really need to do the record.

This is not to say that an artist hoping to use this model's songs are bad, 
or that the world might not be a better place with them recorded and 
available; only that the need does not seem to exist in that artist to make 
that record by whatever means is necessary.  Most folks who've funded a 
record themselves have taken a financial hit, and that's because they felt 
they had to record those songs, against any financial advisor's reasonable 
assessment of a cost/benefit ratio.

Means to circumvent this simple model and shift the burden of financial 
outlay in either time or mechanism have existed for a long while.  They're 
called record labels.  It hasn't historically worked out well for the artists 
(there are OF COURSE exceptions to this, but the artist almost always in some 
fashion has to pay for the production of the record), because generally 
musicians aren't that great at financial rearrangements, especially with 
regard to something as personal and emotionally charged as making a record.

Long story short (yeah, too late, I know): pay for your record.  Then it's 
yours, and you can do whatever the fuck you want with it: give it away, sell 
it for $30, store hundreds of them in your house.  Which is how it should be.

NB: This logic does not necessarily apply to any record other than "Release 
X," by Band Y.  e.g. Benefit records, compilations, holiday/national 
tragedy/animal welfare-type things.

I am very excited about the 506 Auxes show at the end of July!

On Sep 17, 2011, at 17:02, James Hepler <hepstyle AT gmail.com> wrote:

> Ibiblio puked
> 
> On Sep 17, 2011 4:21 PM, "The Pneurotics" <pneurotics AT yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> Oh weird, I think I just got tricked by a ghost.  I see that post from
> Gilbert Neal was dated April 9, but it appeared in my inbox this morning.
> Meaning it was not related to the most recent KickStarter  thread, and my
> response seems incredibly mean-spirited.  My apologies.
> 
> I also got a bunch of old updates from Local 506 with old dates.  How'd that
> happen?
> 
> 
> ________________________________
> From: Mimi McLaughlin <pneurotics AT yahoo.com>
> To: RTP-area local music and culture <ch-scene AT lists.ibiblio.org>
> Cc: "ch-scene AT lists.ibiblio.org" <ch-scene AT lists.ibiblio.org>
> Sent: Saturday, September 17, 2011 12:11 PM
> Subject: Re: Look, amc-h. You don't care for me, and I don't care for you.
> But...
> 
> 
> Yow. Here's the part where I rush over to kickstarter and make my donation
> to no hard feelings .  N...
> -- ch-scene: the list that mirrors alt.music.chapel-hill --
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/ch-scene