Its a full time battle just trying to stand on your own two feet as a musician. Today's world is built on especially loose footing as a generation of end users are growing up with the idea that paying for music is completely optional.
Heck, even those of us who remember the scratch of a fresh needle on vinyl were dubbing cassettes and investing in CD-R drives before anyone had even heard of Peer to Peer- still someone somewhere in that original chain had to purchase media. For every bootleg there existed at least one soundscan sale. And back in the days of tape deck to tape deck hi-speed dubbing we still had significant generational degeneration.
Even as the Music Industry sand castle started to crumble, our 56k modems limited our Mpegs to lower bitrates and websites could only offer short soundbytes without prohibitive bandwith issues.
However now as high speed internet and terrabite drives are devouring record sales, bit torrent websites have replaced record stores.
The RIAA's heavy handed lawsuits are not the answer. They simply sour people on artists and labels even further and create an atmosphere of antagonism. The sad truth is that technology is what made music an industry and technology has technology has imploded that industry.
Now the issue of paying for music, even for hi definition audiophiles, is a choice. Do I choose to support an artist or not to?
When I decided to start running Dark Asylum as a label and not just a yearly haunted attraction project I knew I'd be contending with the attitude of convenience in a less than ideal economy.
The label and our music is small enough that we don't have to worry too heavily about bootlegging. In six years of providing haunted orchestral music to individuals and industry events I've never once lost a sale to downloads.
That being so I am uniquely advantaged that I have the freedom to offer Dark Asylum's music as a choice. While many labels are scrambling to retain rights to their music and license it out to TV or Movies or whatever else might get a quick buck- I don't see that as a long term answer. My basic premise is to offer free music.
The albums we have are great and have been proven so in numerous haunted attractions and homes for half a decade. Rue Morgue hailed our debut release as, "A strange and subtle stroll through the audible darklands... Suitably foreboding and never panders to cliche."
So we're going to keep it simple, respect our fanbase and respect the new market.
We're going to release free music and pay music. An equal mix of both.
In that spirit- we're releasing our first free albums this year directly to Haunt Industry amateurs and professionals. Halloween is where we got our start and where we keep our heart (we keep other people's in the freezer though).
If anyone deserves a break its Haunters who understand the idea of thankless effort and shoestring budgets. So enjoy MIDNIGHT, dark asylum's free release for Haunted Attractions.
http://www.darkasylummusic.com/buy.htmlDownload it, play it, share it. Its yours. As my first record said:
"UNAUTHORIZED DUPLICATION IS INEVITABLE."
Happy Haunting!