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Re: [microsound] [OT] Glut of new cds of just no money to spend?



if so, do you feel its because you have less money or just that there
is less music you want to purchase?

um, there's also a thing called the network where many musicians are just 'giving it away'. it's a remarkable thing- people sharing culture with each other without having to monetize it.

try it!

I did, for years, and now I'm burnt out. I have so much free music I don't know what to do with it all. I just threw out over a dozen CD-R's full of mp3's of experimental music I had downloaded for free because I almost never listened to it. And though I run a weblabel, I rarely check out other people's weblabels because I just can't keep up with all that music. And I know that very few people are interested in my weblabel, for probably the same kinds of reasons.


I find I'm actually spending *more* on music now than I was a while ago. Maybe I'm just over-compensating by creating scarcity for myself by my limited budget, but I find I do value the music much more once I've bought it. And this is the question I think I've always had about free culture (in both senses of the word "free"), and which I never really resolved in the two years I've been running my weblabel: how does free culture acquire value? If free culture is based on abundance as opposed to scarcity, then how do we attribute value to something that is so plentiful when we are so used to valuing what is scarce *because* it is scarce? Is it enough to simply exchange use value for exchange value, that is, to value music just because it's "good" rather than because it cost a lot of money? If so, then how do we find out what's good? How do we undertake the massive amount of labour entailed in separating the wheat from the chaff? How many people are willing to do that? I, for one, find that I am less willing to do that, and it seems other people feel that same way. So how do we avoid scaring people away from free culture with the magnitude of the task of sorting through stuff to find something they like?

I'm not getting down on free culture, but just asking a set of questions
which I think has recently come to a head for me. Maybe the discussion of these questions could shed some light on why people are engaging less with experimental music in general these days?... What do people think?


P



+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+
{ Phil Thomson
{ home: http://www.sfu.ca/~pthomson
{ label: http://centibel.org/
{ group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/databenders/
+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+

SDF Public Access UNIX System
http://www.freeshell.org/
Geekier than you since 1987.

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