Tangier Sound

Peter in the UK writes:

I’m an accountant and I lose sleep over you giving so much away free!

Shoot, Peter. There isn’t any need to worry about us. Giving everything away has been great for sales. You see, contrary to what the music industry would have you think, music is not a product.

I’m not kidding here. A product is something material that you can package up and sell. Potato chips, those plastic snow-globes you find at tourist shops and toenail clippers are products. Works of art like sculpture or paintings are products because you can buy the original work and make copies of it.

Music and dance are problematic because there is nothing tangible to put on a store shelf. Once the performance of a song is over it’s gone. Once a dance is finished nothing remains. The song and the dance will never be performed again in exactly the same way. In a lot of ways the best analogy for both disciplines would be what Heraclitus said about how you can’t step in the same river twice.

“You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters and yet others go ever flowing on.”

You can record a performance in some way or another and sell the recording, or, in my case, write about the techniques to make music in a book, but if the marketing of that recording is being handled by the artist it is a really bad idea to ask that artist to change his or her perspective and suddenly start thinking like an accountant.

Fish swim. Birds fly. A fish can’t survive in the air and a bird can’t spend all of its time under water. I can play the heck out of a banjo or guitar, but I can’t add up a bunch of receipts without going crazy.

You have to be true to your basic nature.

I am a folk musician. I learned my trade in informal settings where ideas where shared for nothing more than the joy of sharing. I can’t think of something like frailing banjo as intellectual property and setting things up so that somebody with no money would be denied access to the craft would go against everything I beleive in.

Releasing my books out into the Internet through Creative Commons allowed me to maintain the free and open environment I need to work effectively – but it also put the books into the hands of people who would have never picked up a banjo book. By going with what I know, by staying true to my nature and the nature of my craft, I managed to create a new market for my work.

Heck, we’re outselling books that you can’t read for free!

I know it sounds a little crazy, but over in the UK this weekend you have a chance to see this kind of thing played out on a massive scale because Prince is giving away his new CD in The Mail on Sunday.

I’m sure if you asked Prince why he is doing this – and taking a lot of heat from the music industry – he would say the pretty much the same thing I would (he’d say it a bit more stylishly – probably while tie-dying a panda). We give it away because we can, we give it away because we love what we do and we give it away because it’s a sure-fire way to sell a boatload of books or CD’s.

See, I’m not just an idealist. I’m an idealist with health insurance.

I’m so proud of Prince for what he is doing I’ll head out and buy a copy of his new album once it hits the states! Maybe I should start calling myself The Artist Formerly Known As Patrick, throw some purple paint on the Dodge, get Dear Old Dad a sequinned jumpsuit . . .

All joking aside, Pik-Ware Publishing is doing just fine – and even if we weren’t I would still be committed to keeping my work accessible to everybody. It’s folk music. The only way you can keep it is to give it away.

I have set up a mailing list that people attending the Folk Musicians Retreat can use to get to know each other before our August get-together.

If you are coming to the retreat and haven’t already received an invitation to join the mailing list you can sign up or get more information here: http://groups.google.com/group/crisfield-folk-musicians-retreat?hl=en

If you don’t already know, the Folk Musicians Retreat is being held on August 23, 24, 25 and 26 2007 at Janes Island State Park right here in beautiful Crisfield, Maryland. Musicians from all over the world are coming together on the banks of the Chesapeake Bay to learn from each other, enjoy good food and recharge their creative batteries.

If you haven’t signed up yet there are still a few spaces open for the weekend. Don’t miss out! Head over to http://www.funkyseagull.com/retreat.html and sign up today!