News > Muse
Muse Rails Against Warner Music’s Anti-Streaming Stance
By Johnny Firecloud
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
With terrestrial radio reduced to a bad joke and the internet setting fire to everything previously sacred to the record industry, labels are finding it harder and harder to plug the holes in their crumbling rice-paper wall, holding back the inevitable tide of future music commerce.
Muse bassist Chris Wolstenholme has shared his band’s disappointment in their record label’s (Warner Music) decision to stop licensing acts on the company’s roster for free streaming services – everything from Spotify to MySpace.
Wolstenholme told BBC Newsbeat, “It’s like taking your song off the radio, isn’t it? The corporations are setting the rules on these things because they’re clutching at straws. They’ve lost so much money on record sales because of the internet. As far as bands are concerned, you just want people to hear your music whichever way they can.”
Earlier this month Warner Music CEO Edgar Bromfman announced that “free streaming services are clearly not positive for the industry,” and that none of the artists’ future releases in their ranks would be licensed to the services. Back catalogs will remain, but anyone looking to hear some new music from their favorite Warner Music band is going to have to do it the old fashioned way – buying it.
Just kidding, nobody’s going to be buying shit. This kind of anti-evolutionary stance in the industry will not only mean a steep downturn in exposure for aspiring artists looking to get their music to the ears of potential new fans, but acting on it will immediately result in a fan-herd migration to torrent sites and file-sharing networks that will allow listeners to check out the music before buying, if they choose to.
This is the future. If a label’s talking up a band in a thousand press releases and cheering their addition to so-and-so festival bill, yet not allowing the kids to listen to any of the music before buying it, that label’s going to find themselves writhing in profit-freefall agony while adjusting to their new title as the laughingstock of the industry.
If you’re a band, and you’ve got any common sense at all, you just want to be heard. You’re not harboring any illusions that your music is worth anything to anybody, and the fact that nobody knows who you are means you’re going to have to meet the fans halfway. But even if they know you, tastes are fickle and attention spans are shorter than ever. You’ve got to play the new game. You have to provide an incentive, because the options are staggering.
If you’re a monolith company with thousands of employees and a roster dripping with platinum sales, it can be easy to lose touch with who you’re trying to win over. I recently stopped by their Los Angeles main offices for a band interview, and it certainly seems as if they’re doing just fine amidst the hand-wringing over the industry shift; dozens of well-dressed hipsters and fashion-dripping “rocker” employees scurried between high-security offices with important looks on their faces while I sat on a plush couch under a giant portrait of some cock-rocking sleazeball, waiting to be called. The place was dripping with that same douchey leather-bracelet-spiked-hair-soul-patch essence that you see on assholes like Hinder.
Maybe that means nothing. But maybe it’s a telling sign when your main offices look like a Target display showcase for nu-grunge and your CEO is talking like he just got out of a time machine from 1994.
We’ve personally seen the incredibly useful tool streaming is, by turning you guys on to our favorite music and checking out the bands you’ve recommended with a single-click listen. A quick glance through the past two weeks’ worth of Antiquiet pieces is all it takes to see the benefit of streaming; with new music and free downloads available from the Deftones, Portugal. The Man, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Turin Brakes and more, listeners are given a taste to get the earbuds watering, drumming up serious anticipation for each release.
If every recommendation were followed with a purchase link, you can bet your ass we’d have given up that fight a long time ago. The only reason to hide music from the public is if it’s no good. Either that, or the company selling the product is so blinded by their own greed that they’re actually mounting an offensive against the inevitable new relationship dynamics between product and consumer, reacting to the call of a new era by punishing the listener. By insisting on owning your money before you know what the product is.
I’ve never been so motivated to not buy what a company’s selling.
Fact: the first album I remember downloading from the Interwebs was Muse’s Black Holes & Revelations. I didn’t have money to spend on a CD from a band I didn’t know very well, so I thought it would be wise to try downloading their album first to see if it was any good. I fucking loved it. And then I bought a couple of Muse CDs and DVDs, paid good money to see them live, and even bought a T-shirt. That’s money spent on a band I would have never gotten into were it not for the Internet.
amen. some companies just never learn.
My path to discovering Muse was much like Fernando’s…but thanks to P2P I decided I didn’t need to buy The Resistance…because it is a piece of shit.
What about samples or free singles or that kind of shit? It would give an idea of what the band/record is like.
Don’t really care as I don’t use streams of albums at all. I won’t bullshit anyone, I download albums, If I like them I buy if not I don’t. I love having CDs/LPs with booklets etc but first must check if it it worth my money. I’ve got pretty big collection so buying CD is like a ritual for me, cos I’ve to spend money etc. But I hate using Streams, You Tube etc to listen to music, don’t know why prefer to download it anyway and give it a listen on my ipod.
I don’t buy music any more. I used to buy tonnes of it, but I feel that the record industry has not figured out how it works despite battling downloading for ten years and therefore I sleep soundly despite my criminal behaviour. Why would I buy a CD when I am simply transferring that music to my hard drive? Why would I pay to download music of an inferior quality when I can download lossless quality for free? Why are the record labels so stupid? Last year I posted a new Billy Talent song that I had recorded at a show prior to their new album being released. It got thousands of hits and was building up anticipation for the release of their album, at absolutely no expense to Warner Bros. Then the album leaked and Warners pulled all of the live videos off of YouTube. AFTER the album leaked mind you. Idiots. Did Warners move up the release of the album to counter the leak? No, they waited for months and lost a tonne of sales for Billy Talent. Morons. They have NO clue and it seems like they never will until they are looking for new jobs. RIP WB. Wake up to yourself.
P.S. I hope Muse doesn’t have many albums left in their contract because we all know what’s going to happen when that contract is up. :)
It is a nice journalism project to follow the fall of the record industry. Even as a music lover, it’s just entertaining. But as an actual concern, I just can’t get myself to give a fuck about it. That industry was stabbed to death with Napster, and that was it. We are the listeners. We have the power, not them. Don’t want to stream? Fuck you, I’ll download it. Period. There is not even a fight going on. The “music industry” has been dead and rotten for more than a decade now. So, download and download and dowload some more. And instead of buying overpriced music, get yourself a big-ass hard drive to save all the terabytes of music you download.
T but downloading all music is like ripping off band you love, that’s not fair. I download music to check it out, if I like it I wll buy it, If the music is bad the performer/band/label are ripping me off. But I will always eventually buy the CD I love and enjoy for the respect for the artist and art, so they can continue in other – other way it is plain stealing nothing more nothing less.
I totally agree with you, Johnny, but at the same time, I can’t help feeling that Muse shouldn’t be surprised. They have definitely reaped the benefits of corporatized music, and are hand in hand with the devil.
If it was any band besides Muse, I would care, but since it is them complaining, I really don’t give a shit. This is what they get for sucking the corporate dick and churning out shitty mass produced albums devoid of artistry. I can’t help wondering if this is gonna get them dropped by their label. If so, that would be sweet irony for me.
And for the record, (no pun intended)I still like the CD format. I don’t promote the industry model; I don’t like having to buy music without listening to it first, that does suck, and I agree that streaming and file sharing is legitimate and vital way to find out about new music, (I too, was an addicted Limewire/Kazaa/etc.. user before the RIAA started coming down on people, and I still support filesharing, bootlegging, whatever you want to call it.) but the actual CD format is still usable and viable.
I play CDs on my home stereo, in my truck, and at work, and I like the quality of the sound produced by a CD and a real stereo instead of an ipod or a computer(don’t get me wrong, I have both of those as well, I just don’t think the sound produced even comes close to matching my stereo(s)). And I won’t even get started on vinyl, which I also think is still a great format and much prefer listening to than any mp3. IDK, maybe I’m wrong. Call me a dinosaur if you will.
@Zoop: Dinosaur! :P You can easily play those MP3’s on your home/car stereos. Just have to have the right equipment. Most car stereos these days have auxilary
inputs, or even better, a dedicated ipod connection. The same can be said for your home stereo depending on your setup. Worse comes to worse, buy some decent speakers for your computer. None of that means shit however if your MP3’s are encoded poorly. GIGO (Garbage In Garbage Out.)
I know, I know, I’m behind the times. I just can’t kick my CD fixation! I did have some awesome Boston Acoustic speakers on my old gateway computer that sounded great, but they won’t work with my new dell.( I’ve tried!) Those I could live with. I gotta get something with better bass response. And you are totally right about the quality of the mp3 to begin with, if they are poor quality, it won’t matter what you listen to em on. I guess I gotta get an auto adapter for my ipod and see how that sounds in my truck. rowr!