Dr. Frank's What's-it

Promo-phobia

As InstaPundit says, this is an interesting take on the whole file-sharing dilemma:

For the last few years, top executives from all the major record companies have been giving interviews in which they criticize consumers for doing exactly what the execs have been doing for years - getting music for free. I was “in the loop” for a couple years, when I was writing about music for a free weekly, as well as a major daily newspaper, in Los Angeles, many years ago. And I can tell you – none of these characters paid for anything, ever.

The bookcases in their offices and their homes were (and are) filled with “product” that they receive for free as a matter of course. They would not dream of ever paying for recorded music, themselves, with very few exceptions. But now that the average consumer can download a ripped file from the Internet, you’d think it was the end of Western Civilization, from the way they talk...

This is accurate, of course, and he's quite right when he says of music biz folks that the "piousness of their pronouncements" is often offensive. But I don't know how relevant it is. I get all my friends' CDs for free if I want them, and they get mine. Ben's going to send me the new Riverdales when it's ready, as I sent him mine. It's not "stealing" because I get it in the mail from him. It's not the same thing. Promo-ing your own CDs to friends and other music-biz folks is normal. All of it, ultimately, is paid for by the artist anyway. Maybe labels can be a bit free and easy with the promos, but most artists wouldn't dream of complaining. The idea is that it's worth it on the outside chance that someone will write about you, or grant some other publicity-related benefit.

There's an apparent irony there, certainly, but it's beside the point. The point, as I see it, is: music costs money to produce, and somewhere at some point in the process, through some means or by some mechanism, however it is characterized, or conceived of, or disguised, somebody has to buy something.

That said, there is a rather galling aspect to the attitudes of many who end up on the promo list. (This has nothing to do with "stealing," but it's irritating nonetheless.) Rock journalists make their living by getting loads of free stuff, writing about the same eight to ten new records that everyone else is already writing about, ignoring or snidely dismissing the rest, and subsidizing it all by selling most of the "crappy" material at the local record shop.

I satirized this in a song on the MTX album Alcatraz, in the rock-critic-slagging song "I Wrote a Book about Rock and Roll." (Hey, turnabout is fair play.)

If you start doubting me
there's something you should see
take a look at these thousands of CDs
no one has more than me
and I got all of them for free.

Hey, thanks for the free CD, I can sell it at the store down the block...

When this album came out, we expected some kind of reaction from the hundreds of rock journos to whom we sent the CD, but very little was forthcoming. Then we emailed the lyrics to the song, hoping to provoke a reaction. The result was a barrage of requests for another promo from all the writers who, presumably, had already sold their copies without bothering to listen to them. Ah, irony. Or rather, not irony. Rather, the pure one-to-one correspondence between a purported satire and actual human behavior, which I think is slightly different. There's probably a Greek word for that, but I don't know it.

I'd still be happy if one of these dopes ever deigned to review one of my records. (Fat chance!) Promos are part of the budget. That's what they're for. And even if you forced every label employee, every band member, and every journalist to purchase every single promo, it still wouldn't address the issue. You can't put the whole world on the promo list. Rock and roll costs money, and the money has to come from somewhere.

Posted by Dr. Frank at June 27, 2003 01:47 AM | TrackBack