Lord save us all from depravity
The self-proclaimed greatest band in the history of recorded music, Jim’s Big Ego, has just released their new album, “free*“. That’s right, “free*”. That’s “free” with an asterisk, which has a couple of meanings, from what I can tell:
- It’s available for pay-what-you-want-including-nothing download from their web site, but if you want a higher-bitrate version or a physical (CD or vinyl) copy, you have to pay a designated amount of money. Sort of like an NPR pledge “gift.”
- The music on it is Free as in Freedom, or at least, Creative Commons-licensed, although the liner notes aren’t super clear on exactly what the licensing terms are, unfortunately.
So, how’s the music? To make a long story short, it’s good! Some highlights (for me, on a first listen):
- Pascagoula Pawn & Gun – a country/western song from Jim’s Big Ego! “Had to pawn my gun to buy the bullets, had to sell the bullets to get the gun – one day I’ll get them both together, then everybody had better run!” Hilarious.
- Award Show – they’ve been doing this one at concerts for awhile, and it’s still funny.
- International – Jim’s modern take on the Communist anthem, which, dare I say it, makes socialism catchy.
- Depravity – as Jim says, depravity is all around us! A wonderfully sarcastic slap at the right.
- Utopia – a really beautiful song, the kind for which you take out the lighters at the concert. Reminds me a lot of the earlier JBE and solo Jim albums.
To sum up – you may as well try it, it’s free! And this band is clearly betting that, like a junkie, you’ll keep coming back for more.
UPDATE: Jim posted this on the band’s web site! Also, he clarified the licensing terms for me, and I thought I should share his answer – the liner notes say “(cc) SANc”, which means the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike Non-Commercial license. I had stupidly assumed that “SANc” was the name of his publisher.
Trackbacks
Comments are closed.
Awesome. Depravity alone is worth the price, especially if you chose “free” (but at $14.99 I thought it was still a good buy).
Awesome. I support this model; it’s fairly close to the reality these days that people who can pay, and like an artist, are willing to buy items, usually CDs. This is even more so in the folk circuit world, where fans and performers often get together in small venues, as fans are very inclined to purchasing albums at said venues. People who only like some of the artist’s work, and/or aren’t inclined to pay much will go p2p or underground. For many people there is a price/reward barrier; they may not be willing to pay $16 an album for an artist they only sort of like, but they might be willing to pay $2. And for digital downloads, that might be as much profit as going through a regular record label. For smaller artists, the word of mouth alone generated by such a try-before-you-buy option can be worth even more than the $2. In much of Asia, albums are practically given away because the rampant professional piracy has pushed the margins to near zero. Artists there view recordings as a way to drive people to the concerts, where the real money is made.
Oddly enough, there are other parallels that can be drawn between album sales and listener expectations. When recorded mediums first took off, notably in the vinyl heydey, consumers wanted the album to sound as much like a stage performance as possible. Over time, studio production, engineering tricks, and the ability to multilayer additional instruments slowly changed the sound of albums and eventually the desires of consumers. The ‘acoustic’ and ‘live’ albums that crop up now and again are a throwback to the earlier history of mass recorded music. Nowadays, consumers want the live stage act to sound as much like the recording as possible, not the other way around. Makes sense, given that what they know now is the studio recording, not the stage version from concerts or from radio variety programs. People got to know The Beatles music from their appearances on radio and television programs, so people got to know the ‘live’ sound of The Beatles.
Interesting insights. I think you’re right about the shift in listener expectations these days.
In particular, I like JBE’s implementation of this better than the ones that Harvey Danger and Radiohead did, because the different stuff you get at each price level gives an incentive to pay a little more than you otherwise might have – I know I jumped at the vinyl record.