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"format anxiety"?



Christopher Murphy wrote:
  
....There seem to be quite a few who feel that CDR is a
non-medium, which disappoints me as I think there are
quite a few CDR only labels who's work is very
compelling and of extremely high quality... 

Dale Lloyd wrote:						
....until a consumer is placed in the position of that
of the artist and/or label, they have no clue as to
what kind of physical, mental, financial, etc kinds of
energy it takes to have a finished "product" placed in
their hands. So when I hear a half-witted remark about
artistic value based upon either the type of format or
some "authoritative" publication, my proverbial head
starts to spin...  As much as I love and appreciate
design, for me, a release is really about the music. 

***Exactly.  There seems to be a form of musical
elitism on a number of levels, unfortunately, regarding
both the recorded medium and the packaging that houses
it.  Some magazines will not review a release if it is
on CDR (or, if they do, it tends to go to the bottom of
the pile); and some magazines will not review a release
if it doesn't have a "real" cover to attach with the
promo (even if you send them material on a CD, not
CDR).  If you are sending out the promos (whether on CD
or CDR) and working on putting together the money
and/or doing the actual printing while you are waiting
for some early reviews to come in, you might as well
forget it with some of the magazines out there,
something which screams "superficiality" on the part of
these so-called music magazines and which makes myself
as an artist and also as a label operator incredibly
incensed.  As Dale points out, often the artist/label
simply doesn't have the money s/he would like to spend
on packaging.  

There are some stores that will not stock CDR releases;
some distributors who won't carry CDR releases. Some
consumers that don't treat a CDR release seriously.  I
was recently interviewed regarding my recently released
album on Toronto's Piehead (which is a CDR release,
though Piehead is not releasing exclusively CDRs) and
the writer seemed to take it much less seriously than
my album on Bip-Hop (which was released on CD, but was
not supposed to be the focus of the interview because
it came out much earlier this year) and, though it was
unspoken, I couldn't help but think it was because the
Piehead album was released on CDR.  On the same topic,
one artist who initially agreed to record an album for
Piehead's 2002 series later said "no thanks" after he
found out that his album would be released on CDR, not
CD!  As an artist, I find this totally flabbergasting
as, if this artist were thinking as Dale says--that it
is "about the music"--the artist shouldn't have given a
damn whether the album would be released on CDR or CD. 
I know my first questions when asked to record anything
for a label I am not familiar with are "what will you
be doing to promote the material? what type of
distribution do you have?"--because, though I love to
see good packaging, I'd rather know that the material I
spent time recording was going to get some exposure so
that consumers would know about it and potentially buy
it and listen to it.  My goal is for people to hear my
music, not whether it comes out on a certain format or
with fancy packaging, therefore whether it is CDR or CD
is not a big concern for me.  There are a few who run
vanity labels, where they simply record an album's
worth of material, burn literally a couple of CDRs,
come up with a name for their label, and then say
they're operating a label as if it were on par with
those who do truly operate labels and do it for the
music, not to soothe their egos.  (Thankfully those
doing it for the music in the microsound and
independent electronic/experimental music scene far outnumber
any of the vanity projects I'm talking about).  But the
result of the vanity projects is that some
mags/consumers think "oh you've released an album, eh? 
OH, it's on CDR! Aha" and then it's like a light goes
off in their head and they think "'vanity project',
probably only 2 or 3 CDRS of this 'album' exist", which
ruins it for those who release on CDR for the other
reasons (cost, ease of creation, etc).  It's almost as
if, like Kim Cascone's "container anxiety" (the urge to
fill a 74 minute long cd--the container--with 74
minutes worth of music just because it can be filled
which leads to a lot of cds with filler material ie
quantity for the sake of it" also applies to format;
"format anxiety", perhaps? Speaking of formats, we were
talking about MP3 labels last week, and I just wanted
to add that it is good to see something like the MP3
reviews column in URB (not gladhanding URB, just good
to see a print magazine take MP3s seriously and review
them, something which no other print magazine, to my
knowledge, is doing). Andrew 

albums out now: Sprung (http://bip-hop.com) 
More Destructive Than Organized 
(http://staalplaat.com)
Highest Common Denominator (http://pieheadrecords.com)
Physical and Mental Health (http://dialrecords.com) 
74'02 (split with Hypo) (http://tsunami-addiction.com)
check Cognition (http://techno.ca/cognition)
for upcoming appearance and release updates
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