Terry Callier‘s life offers an object lesson in a standard trope, in the music industry. We all know the one – the humble genius, misunderstood by a rapacious industry machine, denied the success he deserved and forced to labour unrecognised programming computers instead of writing songs. In fact, Terry did pretty well compared to the vast majority of artists. You’ve probably at least heard of him. His music is widely known and as so often, will now be better known (and sell better) now he’s no longer with us. Like Nick Drake and many others.

The blame – if there is any – for the lack of full recognition for these kinds of artists is usually laid squarely at the door of the industry. Obsessed with money, it fails to recognise or properly promote these artists, or if it does, rips them off. A lot of the time, though, it also comes down to personality. Not all artists are as comfortable with self promotion as, say, Amanda Palmer, the doyenne of the crowd-funding game, prepared to lay herself out naked and invite fans to pay to paint her green. It helps she already had a fanbase (due to previous major label money spent on promoting the Dresden Dolls) but this is what is required of artists these days. If you don’t sell yourself, you’ll get nowhere.

So what are artists like Callier supposed to do ? Suppose you are a musical genius but have neither the time nor inclination to spend 50% of available time promoting yourself, designing websites, covers, crowd-funding games, doing social media, and all the other stuff that gets in the way of actually making some music ? Yes, musicians now have all the benefits of cheaper recording tools, instant distribution on the web, instant ability to communicate to thousands round the globe- (not that this works too well – we all know the problem of musician created spam, and we all ignore it – it killed myspace) – and in that respect we no longer need big labels for anything other than promotion.

Or we shouldn’t … yet the effect of the internet has been the opposite of might have been. Even so-called ‘DIY artists’ now have to play exactly the same promo games as the major labels. We are all ‘commercial’ now, whether we like it or not. Artists now need 20 million Spotify plays, every single month, just to net minimum wage. The option of making ‘non-commercial’ music (ie, everything that isn’t straight pop. rock, and hip hop) is still there, but on the average ‘sales’ (ie, streams) those artists are going to get – anywhere between 10,000 and 50,000- there’s simply no income worth counting. It’s beer money, if that. Too many possible sales are lost to pirates, peer-to-peer sharing, and all the other ‘illegal’ ways people now get their music.

Artists know perfectly well that the clock can’t be turned back, that expecting recordings to earn the money they used to simply isn’t going to happen anymore. But that leaves the ‘humble genius’ out in the cold, even more than they used to be. However much they love the art and want to make music, the simple financial pressures of life will mean that it becomes harder and harder to take the risk, to find the time both to write the music, record it, and promote it.

The time has come for music fans to take up the baton dropped by the record companies, to do their part in the new ‘contract’ between those who create and those who consume. For too long, music fans have had it all their own way. They have music on tap, mostly for free, or nearly free. They can find just about any music ever made at the click of a mouse. And they feel entitled to all this. Yet there will be a downside. More and more artists will simply find that producing music for ‘consumer use’ becomes too difficult, too costly, and those artists not too comfortable with pushing themselves or making the compromises necessary to achieve mass consumption will simply stop making music. It’s always been a hard game, but now the cliff face is so high few will find the courage to climb it. Those with any kind of family responsibilities will simply not be able to make that choice anyway.

If your preferred kind of music doesn’t happen to be the (mostly) pap served up by the major labels, then you can no longer just expect it to be served up to you by any form of mass media, whether that’s TV, radio, or the internet. They will only push music they’ve basically been paid to push, even if that’s indirectly (ie, via the advertising that pays the bills for commercial radio) – and if you like artists like Terry Callier, then you’re not going to find them in the mass media.

It’s time to be (however much we hate the word) “pro-active”. Put the time in. Go searching sites like Bandcamp, follow up shares from your friends, and if you find something good, share it on social media, and go on sharing it.

And above all – PAY for it. I know musicians always end up with this request, and most of you feel we shouldn’t.

Well, consider this.

There is a huge difference between zero and 1. Zero pays nothing, achieves nothing, contributes nothing. 20,000 x 0 = … 0   Nada. Nothing. Nowt. Sweet FA.

Yet 20,000 x 1 = 20,000. If you only pay £1 – just £1 – to artists who are offering their work at a ‘name your price’ level (and a lot of us do) – and if enough of you do – then the chances are good that artist will have the wherewithal to continue to create. But if you pay nothing at all, then you can be fairly sure that at some point the artist will simply stop creating.

It shouldn’t be too much to ask. You’re all quite happy to pay £2.50 for a rubbish cup of coffee from Starbucks that cost pennies to make, and is gone in 5 minutes. Yet somehow you believe that paying even £1 for music that cost thousands to make and lasts a lifetime is something you shouldn’t have to do, anymore.

We’re not asking for millions, for fame, for fortune. Just enough to continue to create. And if you prefer to blame the industry for Terry Callier’s lack of proper recognition or ‘success’, fair enough – but in the future the blame for that will have to be laid at the music fans’ door.

The music fan now has all the power. It’s YOU who is responsible for what music gets made, YOU who is responsible for supporting the artists you love. Don’t expect the industry to do it, because the industry is only interested in lowest common denominator music that can be sold to millions.

It’s up to you, now. If you find music you love, pay something for it. Or you probably won’t find it again. And you certainly won’t find artists of the calibre, honesty, and humble genius of Terry Callier.

Dylan’s Room just keeps on winning.

Can’t keep up with Dylan’s Room – now Audience Award winner at Cambridge film festival

http://www.cambridgefilmfestival.org.uk/news/and-the-audience-awards-go-to

Good to see Layke Anderson’s fine short ‘Dylan’s Room’ (featuring music from Erebus & Terror)is being shown at the Raindance Film Festival – fingers crossed the judges make the same decision as the wise bods at the Isle of Wight festival and give it a gong, it deserves it.

http://m.imdb.com/title/tt2241135/

The news today from Spiegel Online that Pirate Party executive Julia Schramm’s book ‘Click Me’ (for which she received a $131,010 advance) has been removed from a file-sharing website due to the actions of her publisher (though in her name) has induced a hollow laugh from me, today. No doubt Julia is furious- after all, she has described the idea of intellectual copyright as ‘disgusting’- but then, she did do the deal, she took the money. Money that has come to from the exploitation of  her own intellectual copyright.

To me, that makes her a hypocrite, even if she didn’t personally initiate the takedown. If you’re going to advocate a no copyright world, don’t then get into bed with those who make a living from it, and take their money. Publish it yourself, for free, it’s easy enough these days.

But then so often that’s really what’s behind so much of the anti-copyright rhetoric. MONEY, and who’s really raking it in from all this ‘free’ content. It isn’t ‘free’, anyway – it costs time, mostly, these days, and money too (in my case, to pay other musicians and record them well) and those who insist that because it’s ‘art’, it should be ‘free’, are so often blogging from the defence of their Big Tech white towers, getting paid to issue canonicals against copyright while wearing expensive Dr Dre Beats headphones and playing their free content back on expensive devices via expensive broadband connections, and sipping a latte that probably cost more than most albums, these days.

‘Free’ content is never free.

The same bloggers often get all uptight about bad conditions and pay among those who make the devices they love so much, but conveniently forget that the illegal content they get from those devices- and never pay for- represents an equivalent exploitation. Big Tech, in the form of Google and the ISPs, never mind pirate sites like Grooveshark, are making an absolute fortune out of the work of musicians, photographers, and writers everywhere, via ad placement, sub fees, and pricey fast broadband packages. Yet those who create the content make very little, if anything at all, from it. And those who advocate a no-holds-barred free content world in the name of ‘mashup’ ‘art’ do so mostly because their own ‘original’ work would be so lame without the addition of a sample nicked from some classic, that of course they want the ‘right’ to plagiarise from anywhere. They’re just not good enough on their own.

It’s no accident that of my last four releases, three are releases of commissioned work, not ‘art’ albums made purely for the sake of the art. I haven’t had the money or time recently for such a luxury, and it’s commissioned work (as Apollo Music) that pays the bills. God knows, those of us who write instrumental music that can’t benefit from the Internet’s obsession with virality and lowest common denominator LOLs, that isn’t about selling ‘merch’ or appearing on X Factor, or any other tawdry promo activity, know that we’re on a losing game here. We always were anyway (though from the 60s to the 90s there was just enough money in it to survive, if no longer) and we’ve long accepted the current situation.

But there is a real, basic, economic issue here. Musicians like me don’t exist in some parallel world with no bills, and no other calls on our time. To make our art costs TIME and MONEY, and if we can’t find either, because not enough of you pay for the music, then there’s a good chance the art will NOT be made. All we ask is that if you like our music enough to want to play it offline, then you’ll have to come across with some readies. You can hear every album I’ve ever made, here, in full, for free. And that ought to be enough. But if you want to play it offline, with better sound quality, have the respect and decency to pay for it.
And that’s all Julia’s publishers are asking for – and if she doesn’t like it, don’t do the deal, Julia.

Latest release – ‘Low Tide’

A collection of short atmospheric pieces from the Apollo Music cinematic archive. Available on Bandcamp

Low Tide [preview edit] from tom green on Vimeo.

Dylan’s Room wins Best Drama, Isle of Wight Film Festival… and now also in for Raindance …

finally getting around to updating the languishing websites of both AFD and Apollo Music … but there will very shortly be full release of “Low Tide”, a collection of mostly ambient pieces from the cinematic archive. Due in mid September.