In his latest column in Point of Departure, Bill Shoemaker surmises that "the anticipation and excitement of experiencing a once in a thousand years event has been replaced with a satiation exemplified by a crammed-full MP3 player." It has? Where? I'm not saying there aren't folks who are more interested in acquiring music than in listening to it, but when has that ever not been the case? And where's the evidence that such a phenomenon is more prevalent now than at any other point in history (easier access to music does not automatically equal consumption for its own sake at the expense of listening)?
Shoemaker doesn't attempt to tackle those questions, because his strawman argument is just another basis for the tired regurgitation of the falsehood that the free "illegal" downloading of music is inherently harmful to artists. The problem with that argument, aside from the fact that not one single solitary study conducted since the advent of Napster in 1999 has shown a direct correlation between illegal downloading and declining music sales, is that it downplays or outright ignores how artists are treated by their labels. Despite reams of evidence (in the form of one-sided contracts) showing artists getting the short end of the stick from labels, being cheated out of royalties and other earnings, Shoemaker, in true Kent Brockman fashion, places the blame squarely on you, the listener. Problem is, the example he uses to buttress his argument actually helps support the opposing viewpoint.
Shoemaker attacks Wire columnist Phil Freeman for downloading Bill Dixon's Intents and Purposes for free, and asserts that, "Luckily for Freeman, Dixon is now in his 80s and, reportedly, in declining health. Otherwise, Dixon would have reacted immediately, fiercely and publicly to Freeman’s admission, as Dixon has for decades strenuously indicted album copying and performance taping as theft." His insulting implication that Dixon is mentally incapable of standing up for himself aside, Shoemaker's use of Freeman's downloading of Intents and Purposes to bolster his point doesn't wash. Understandably, Dixon would no doubt be upset at someone downloading for free work of his which is still readily available for purchase. But Intents and Purposes hasn't been in print anywhere in the world for over 30 years (the last reissue was by French RCA-Victor in 1976), and Shoemaker doesn't even put forth the possibility that maybe Dixon's contract with RCA didn't give him the kind of control that every artist should have over their work that would have enabled him to reissue it himself. To Shoemaker, "freeloaders" and MP3 bloggers are the villains, not the labels that don't allow a musician access to (or ownership of) his or her masters. And if labels hadn't treated musicians so consistently shabbily for so many decades, something like the donation system he proposes wouldn't be necessary.
And nowhere does Shoemaker address used-record dealers who routinely get anywhere between $20-$150 (depending on condition) for copies of Intents and Purposes. Free downloads of this record obviously don't generate income for Dixon, but neither do sales of used (or new-old-stock) copies. MP3 bloggers don't profit from their blogs; record sellers obviously charge for records, and directly profit off the lack of availability of some records. If Shoemaker is so concerned with potential lost income for musicians, wouldn't it stand to reason that his line of argument would also encompass those who are actually making money off the scarcity of these records? (I'm not saying that used record dealers are necessarily in the wrong here -- although I've certainly seen my share of Bleeding Gums Murphy/"He's Dead? Well why didn't you say so?" prices on records -- just that that's where Shoemaker's argument is leading.)
Additionally, he seems to take it on faith that, in the cases of Blue Note, Koch, and ECM, labels' dealings with artists were/are square. Artists don't see any money from free downloads, but do they see any money from reissues of their work? A talk with any musicians who were surprised to see their work reissued without their consent or input might clear a few things up for Shoemaker. In fact, it's cruelly ironic that Shoemaker focuses on Bill Dixon's work, as Dixon was not too long ago shafted by independent label Cadence who reissued his Collection album without his consent (a saga amply detailed here). Shoemaker doesn't address this -- a label profiting from an artist's work in apparent violation of their contract -- at all.
Finally, his statement "In the ‘60s, the Revolution in Jazz was on Impulse" would no doubt raise a few eyebrows. For one thing, Impulse!'s slogan was "The New Wave In Jazz is on Impulse!" (changed to "The New Wave in Folk is on Impulse!" on Charles Mingus' The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady at Mingus' insistence), not as Shoemaker implies, "The Revolution in Jazz is on Impulse!" For another, I wasn't there, but I suspect that many around at the time -- possibly including Dixon, organizer of the October Revolution in Jazz in New York in 1964 -- would argue that said revolution was not only not confined to a single record label (ESP-Disk and BYG/Actuel, to name two, recorded and released far more of the new music than Impulse!), but that the revolution was not/could not be confined to recordings, period. I don't mean this as an endorsement of Stu Vandermark's ultimately confused assertion that the "true nature" of the music is in live performance and not on recordings (I'm not saying it is, and I'm not saying it isn't -- I'm saying there is no one single "true nature" of this or any other music, and to claim that there is only places arbitrary and pointless restrictions on the music and its development), but Shoemaker's recasting of the music into such a narrow context is ahistorical, to say the least.
For decades record labels made insane profits on endless repackages of previously-released material. The initial advent of the CD prompted some folks to re-buy records they only had on vinyl or cassette. Seeing the enormous profit potential (from the mid 80s to the late 90s, CDs cost roughly double the price of an LP, but were far cheaper to manufacture), labels tried to find out how many times people would be willing to re-buy their favorites (the advent of Blu-Ray is an attempt by movie studios to try the same thing, cranking out endless repackagings of movies to artificially stimulate demand for a marginally improved format). As an example, I bought the Who's Who's Next four times: as part of a vinyl boxed set of Who albums, as a CD, as a "remixed/remastered with bonus tracks" CD, and as a "deluxe edition" double-CD. But the first time I acquired the record was when I taped my brother's copy. So, despite the fact that I bought the thing four other times, MCA/Universal -- and Bill Shoemaker -- would argue that I owe them and the Who money for "stealing" that first copy. And what happens when the labels don't get it right? Blue Note's first issue of The Thelonious Monk Quartet featuring John Coltrane Live At The Five Spot -- Discovery! was at the wrong speed; several years later, Blue Note issued a corrected version -- only as part of an expensive boxed set. And I can't even count how many times Kind of Blue has been reissued, each time "corrected" in some way from the previous edition.
This is the kind of behavior by record labels that Shoemaker ignores, which is a shame, because not only is it a gross disservice to the artists he claims to be defending (in many cases, they only got their session fee for the initial recording, and the labels aren't required to pay the artists anything additional for reissues of that material), but it promotes free downloading. I've already bought the fucking record three times, and now the label is putting out another "definitive" edition? Fuck that, and fuck them. At this point, they're asking you to download the record for free. For Shoemaker to claim that MP3 bloggers and downloaders are somehow "exploiting" artists, and for him to ignore the millions of dollars labels have made exploiting artists is disingenuous, to say the least.
