We are ash and we are books, coffee-stained and overlooked

[venta]

Every so often I enthuse wildly at people to try and get them to listen to The Indelicates, who really are bloody marvellous. And they've got a new album out now. So really, you should pop along and have a look. The album is very varied in style, so I'd say listen to the lot, but if you want a couple of recommended tracks, I'd try Sympathy for the Devil (which isn't a cover) and Ill.

You can listen to the tracks I linked above in their "audio preview" section - full quality, full length preview. In fact, you can listen to all the tracks on the album. And, if you want to download the album, you can choose what to pay for it. Including nothing.

While many bands have been complaining bitterly about the state of the music industry, and making pathetic whimpering noises which could only be pacified with a parliamentary Act of very dubious nature, The Indelicates decided that the world was changing and they'd just have to change with it.

So they've set up their own label, and released their second album on an In Rainbows-a-like business model. Anyone who wants can put themselves on the label, and upload stuff to be made available to the public in the same way.

I downloaded the album the day it came out, and I paid for it because I'm a big fan of their music. It's very possible that I'm unrepresentative, and this venture of theirs is hopelessly ideological and ultimately doomed. However, I admire them for trying. They are people who Do Something instead of complaining that Something Must Be Done, and I think that's worth supporting.

Warning: I know there's a least one person on my friends list who will have issues with the album cover. It's called Songs for Swinging Lovers, and features the band's frontpersons swinging from a gallows. Not very realistically, but: approach with caution if such things bother you.

Comments

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

doesn't alter the fact than I can't eat :)

The gaming field seems generally more grown up about this than musicians are. It's widely accepted that you cannot start with the premise "this must pay my bills". You sell what you make and if it turns out to pay your bills that's great. If it doesn't, you need other work too.

Admittedly I'm talking about music not video games

And yes, there is a difference here.

The trouble with the "pay what you think it's worth" argument is that the concept of "worth" here is really badly defined. Economists tell us that a thing is worth what you're willing to pay. But sometimes we do indeed buy things and resent the price (for example, drinks from vending machines at railway stations) so clearly if given a choice to re-price these items ourselves we will not pay what they are "worth".

[ulfilias.livejournal.com]

This is the case of something being worth more on how desperate we are.

Those vending machines cost maintinance and the price of the machine for low volume sales so as to get a hot chocolate at 3am in the morning on a cold station platform.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Also, I suspect economists run into problems in that people will mis-estimate what something is "worth".

If I ask you - now - what you'd be willing to pay for a paper cup of hot chocolate on a station platform you might say (I dunno) £1.50.

But when it's bloody freezing and 3am and the machine says £3, I bet you cough up :)

[venta.livejournal.com]

This is, of course, a generic 'you' - I have no idea what you personally might pay for your 3am choccie.

[ulfilias.livejournal.com]

£1.50 your such a londoner....the internal Yorkshireman in me would be screaming if it was more than 50p.

At 3am prices i'd probably be crying, but then there would be no one arround to see it drip into the hot chocolate =;-)

[venta.livejournal.com]

Am so not a Londoner.

My hot chocolate was just going to be three times bigger and better than yours :)

[(Anonymous)]

And of course, the song correctly goes..."Maybe its because I'm a Londoner, That I loathe London Town!"

Will (born Clapham, too lomg ago for almost any of you to remember.)

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

This is the case of something being worth more on how desperate we are.

Sure, I understand the economic arguments, but the fact remains that our perception of value doesn't actually change. The more circumstances conspire to make us "overpay" for something, the more resentful we feel about it. Pay-what-you-like schemes give people a way to pay what they think something is worth to them, not what it's actually worth.

[ulfilias.livejournal.com]

Worth....Yeah. Its an odd concept and often something you don't realise for a long time. I have a pair of steel toe cap boots that have great proportions, fit well and i can do a 5 day festival in them. I paid £30 for them as they seemed good value. They are slowly dieing and thier worth to me would be huge if i could only find another pair !

Also how many CDs do you just listen to a few times, one or two tracks maybe are good that make it to your ipod. Other albums are complete gold and you wore them out in your walkman. Are they worth the same ?

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Indeed, good examples.