Screw sales... do what you want....

[Little_Fella!]

@ Dirty Bass : This is spot on imo...

Can I add to this train of thought jus by saying, like it or not, record sales are the necessary bench mark for the whole industry as an indicator as to how well a particular artist is doing in relative terms to the genre of music that he/she is creating within...

Without the incentive that if someone likes a certain work of art that they are prepared to pay for it, you cannot have an accurate reflection as to how popular, shall we say, the artist is at any given time and therefore there isn't a music 'industry' to operate within...

Utopia anyone...? lol:)

[crime]

Ok, my thoughts on the replies here...

I think there's nothing wrong with making money out of music, I'd be a hypocrite if I did, I've earned my living from it for the past 4 years, I mean do you think an artist would give away his paintings for free just because he had a day job?? I don't think so...

my point is more not worrying about whether it will be popular or not, and artisticly going in the direction you want to, ignoring all the people, such as distributors who will try and tell you "It's good, but we can't sell it"

...especially when these records sell through in the end, and often go on to be classics (I mean records that didn't fit the mold, and therefore scared distributors off possibly)

I mean, I think it's the biggest cliche in any kind of underground music, that no-one in techno would admit that they are driven by money, but I'm sure that a lot of it, in one way or another, is. For instance, being told by a distributor that you have to change things to fit in with what they think is selling right now.

It just seemed to me that it got to the point where you are screwed if you don't fit into a nice little box that's easy to sell and understand.. I appreciate that distributors have to sell records, and not all distributors are like this, but when you take the examples of Prime and Integrale, where it seemed to me that the Label Management A&R was basically "If you don't sound like the other records we sell, forget it" I think this can really make people fall into line, let's face it, the evidence is out there in record stores around the world...

this is what, to me, has stifled the style and prevented progression, and inevitably made me far more interested in hearing what people like Aphex, Venetian Snares, Boards of canada and many other more diverse things..

I don't see the 2 things from seperate, the DJing/Performance and producing... Not for me anyway, I don't play such hard music these days, and I have no desire too, especially when I felt so out of place at hard techno parties.. Maybe this is because I'm playing live a lot, and playing the stuff which will be coming out on vinyl soon...

Anyway, half way through working on my album right now, and totally destroyed from 2 gigs in Southern Russia this weekend, I think we're going to make a bleep radio special from it maybe.... ;)

[Adey]

good on yer mr hawkins :)