Saul Williams - The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!

I thought I should blog about this.

My Dearest Friends and Fans,

It is my greatest honor to present to you The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!,
my new album produced by Trent Reznor and mixed by Alan Moulder. The wall of sound that we've created is tagged with such graffiti that a passerby would seek out doors and ways to ENTER. Once inside a world defined by dreams come true they'd find aligned with the simplest act of sharing what we treasure. Most people aren't aware of the world of art and commerce where exploitation strips each artist down to nigger. Each label, like apartheid, multiplies us by our divide and whips us 'til we conform to lesser figures. What falls between the cracks is a pile of records stacked to the heights of talents hidden from the sun. Yet the energy they put into popularizing smut makes a star of a shiny polished gun. The ballot or the bullet for Mohawk or the mullet is a choice between new times and dying days. And the only way to choose is to jump ship from old truths and trust dolphins as we swim through changing ways. The ways of middlemen proves to be just a passing trend. We need no priests to talk to God. No phone to call her. And when you click the link below, i think it fair that you should know that your purchase will make middlemen much poorer...

NiggyTardust!

love,

Saul

I think what he's trying to say is go download his album.

Pay $5 if you like for a 320kbps mp3 or lossless flac version, or try the 196kbps mp3 version for free. He may be more poetic, but he's one of the few people who's wordier then I. Great song writer, bad copywriter. Get to the point buddy, we have short attention spans here! :)

Seriously though. This is the future, wordy copy writing doesn't mean a damn thing. Even if he had misspellings it wouldn't really mean a damn thing in the big picture. Such things miss the point. Being personal, building an honest direct relationship with your fans, that's what this is all about. Saul and Trent are just doing what huge corporate conglomerates have been doing for years, cutting out the middle men. This is just a first step, no need for perfection. Musicians have all the time in thw world to polish their communications skillz.

I must admit, I haven't listened to Saul's latest album yet. (Six minutes remaining till download.) However I have very much enjoyed what I've heard of his previous work in all its untamed rawness especially his music video, List of Demands. Since I haven't listened I don't know what I can say about this new album other then, "Why not go download it for free and see if you like it?"

If you do like it be a patron, add to the tip jar and pass on the good word.

P.S. Love the references to David Bowie's stage persona Ziggy Stardust.

Read more on Saul Williams/Niggy Stardust on wikipedia.

Also, It's important to acknowledge that Trent Rezner and Saul Williams are obviously following the lead of Radiohead with their freely downloadable, name your own price album In Rainbows (wikipedia) which came out in the last week or two.

This release follows the exact same model as Radiohead's In Rainbows. Trent Rezner and Saul have learned from Radiohead's rookie mistakes making sure it's much easier to find the new album on the website and are using Amazon's muchos scalable S3 hosting platform to handle the anticipated rush of downloads.

We are definitely at the very beginning of something big here. After years of it running over the damn is finally letting go. Let the music flow!

Update: Upon second, third and forth reading, I love Saul's copy.

Universal Music snubbing Apple and its customers

Anymore I love reading about what the major music labels are doing, because it's so damn entertaining!

Re: DailyTech - Universal Jumps to SpiralFrog's Free Downloads: iPods Not Welcome

In what appears to be a snub to apple (like NBC's recent move from the Apple Store to Amazon.com) Universal music has chosen to sell it's music through a music service that doesn't work on the iPod, I assume it uses the irrelevant and unsuccessful Microsoft DRM, but the truth is it doesn't even matter.

Has Universal ever been more irrelevant?

They're behaving exactly like a spoiled child.

This is a fight Universal fundamentally has no chance in the world of winning, because it's not about Apple. It's about them waking up and finally realizing that mp3 IS the standard. It's the only one true way to sell music in this era.

A recap, first Universal makes Apple the king/master by demanding DRM on their music, apple delivers the only successful DRM option, then Universal rails against the master they've made. Finally Universal tries to snub it's master by choosing to make some other 3rd party the general public has never heard of their master.

What Universal fundamentally doesn't seem to get is by snubbing apple's Fairplay DRM and the open MP3 format they're snubbing ANY and ALL successful or working options to sell music to their customers. They're giving them no choice BUT to steal music! Which is why Trent Rezner of NIN, one of their biggest artists is off in Australia telling his fans to just go ahead and steal the music. (read on.. I'm getting to it)

I have one further suggestion for Universal based on their brilliant logic.

Universal: 99% of all P2P shared music is ripped straight of a CD! (epiphany) Why don't you simply stop selling CD's as well? Anyone selling CD's is clearly inducing copyright theft. You must stop selling CD's!

Furthermore I would suggest Universal then start selling ties, and start calling themselves a clothing company, because they certainly aren't by definition in the music industry anymore. They seem to be doing anything but selling music.


In related news (as mentioned above) Trent Reznor of NIN and also represented by Universal Music was so disgusted by the price gouging by Universal on NIN CD's in Australia, a topic that he spoke out against months ago, that he told his fans at an Australian concert "...Has anyone seen the price come down? Okay, well, you know what that means — STEAL IT. Steal away. Steal and steal and steal some more and give it to all your friends and keep on stealin." Enjoy the clip yourself, I've embedded it below. It's short, sweet and clear. There's no question about the issue.



This just makes me laugh and laugh. Universal has outlived it's utility in the music age. It's whole *idea* of the music industry is, is dead. The only competency they have left is as a marketing arm to promote bands in traditional media. Which is funny because anymore radio and TV are increasingly loosing relevance to word of mouth music sharing on the internet. Web services like Last.fm and iLike.com have far more relevancy in shaping tastes and developing the music market then pretty much all of traditional media combined.

The CD is dead as a format. Therefore there's no need for distribution, so what it all comes down to is there's just no need for Universal at all.

Adios Universal, unless you pull your head out of your *ss and start selling mp3's you're dead... of course you've been dead to many like me for a long long time anyway.

Spectator in his own demise, Tower Records' founder on its rise & fall

I just noticed this amazing interview with Tower Records founder Russ Solomon by J.D. Lasica on the rise and fall of Tower Records. In it he talks about the effect of downloadable music, and the value and experience of music stores.

A revealing 9-minute interview with Russ Solomon, founder of Tower Records, about the music retailing giant's rise and fall. He also talks about Napster, the ipod (he won't use one), trends in the music industry, and how the CD isn't dead.

Most interesting points:

• Russ Solom talks about the opening of the original Tower Records in Los Angelos, 1970, and the odd timing that made it an over night success with the death of Janis Joplin down the street from the store and the subsequent release of her new and final album at the store.


• Russ talks about the downturn in the market do filesharing and what he thinks causing the demise of the music industry... rising prices while the market was slipping over the years, a lack of singles, and the alienation of the youth market.


• Russ also considers there to be a "fad element" to digitial downloading, saying the demand for tactile goods will return.
  
  Personally, While I do generally agree with him I don't think demand will ever return for current "plastic disks". I do think there will come a large demand for better formats, multi-track / multi-channel formats, other new products, merchandising, more imersive and participatory experiences, and above all more demand for real world experiences.
  
  While records were before my time I miss the large artfully format of the record album. Flash cards are also becomeing popular as a means of packaging, USB thumb drives above all. Day dreaming of what new forms music packaging might take now that it can litterally take any form it likes is now favorite hobby of mine.


• Finally Russ talks about being a "spectator of his own demise" at Tower Records during the bankrupcy, the future of the music buying experience, and what's next.

originally posted January 19, 2007 by jdlasica: Tower Records' founder on its rise & fall