Why David Byrne's Guardian Op-Ed About Spotify Has Blown My Mind
Originally posted October 2013--
On October 10th, I wrote a blog post called 'Why U No Talk About Bandcamp?'. If you haven't read it yet and can't be arsed to go and read it, I basically shared some thoughts on how I was getting tired of the onslaught of 'Spotify Is Bad' think pieces that always completely ignore the fact that 'Bandcamp Is Good'. The post was especially brought on by Thom Yorke's recent grumblings, which were all grumble and no solution. And, to me, that really stood out as another wasted opportunity for a big name in the music biz to come out in support of the one site that seems to be providing independent artists with the solution to the problem that everybody keeps talking about (which seems like hasn't happened since Sufjan).
But, I suppose problem's make for better talking points, so all we get is problem pieces.
And, right on queue, the very next day, David Byrne's op-ed about the problem with Spotify / Streaming was published on The Guardian. It's well written and makes valid and important points and I'm a fan of Mr. Byrne, but, again... Bandcamp gets the briefest of mentions (the only mention: "I'll go directly to an artist's website, or Bandcamp, or even Amazon..." and there wasn't even a link to Bandcamp to maybe turn a few of the uninitiated readers on to it). And, just like with Mr. Yorke, you'll find no David Byrne music available to buy on Bandcamp. Which was the exact thing that I talked about the day before. Apparently David Byrne doesn't read my blog.
Anyway, I've been preoccupied at work all day trying to figure out a way that I could somehow fit the context of my post and David Byrne's Guardian post — with links to both posts and some sort of clever analogy about the two — into a single tweet. But I was getting nowhere and kept running into the character limit. And then I noticed something on Ben Walkers tumblr that sort of blew my mind.
You see, Ben was kind enough to pull some words from my "no one is talking about Bandcamp" piece and share it on his blog. Which, at first, I mostly just liked because it's not that often that your own words get quoted on somebody else’s Tumblr (that honour is usually left for dead poets and Harry Potter characters). So I tweeted a link to it. And then I visited that link to bask quietly in a private moment of vanity. But with the timely connection between what I wrote on the 10th and what David Byrne wrote on the 11th fresh in my mind, something jumped out at me. See if you can spot it:
Do you see it? No?! Alright, I will shorten things down and add some well placed bolding and italics:
"whenever you come across someone complaining about the current state of being a musician, whether that be another talking head..."
Sure, I was talking about a different type of talking head*, but, still... when you look at all of the above puzzle pieces, the whole thing is bit: