Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

open invitation to hear some new music

Author:James Barton
Posted:8/15/2000; 1:23:16 AM
Topic:open invitation to hear some new music
Msg #:19717
Prev/Next:19716 / 19718

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Dear Dave

As part of the ongoing debate about Napster and the music industry, you recently asked to hear from artists who make a living from writing music.

We operate as a small independent production company so we can choose how we distribute our music without being constrained by the established industry.

A point that seems to have been overlooked in the debate is the music itself and what it can do for people. We believe that of greater interest than devising a fair way to be remunerated for our work is for our music to be out there being listened to. It's far more important to us to have our music heard by people, and hopefully move them to feel something, perhaps some of our passion that went in to writing in the first place.

We wholeheartedly embrace Napster as a technology and since we don't yet have the answer for how to distribute our music freely AND get paid we've decided to take the plunge and give one of our tracks away for free to see if it reaches more people this way.

The track is called Red Moon Sunset, written for BBC Radio 3, and we as a band are called smiled.

We'd like to invite anyone who'd like to hear something new to come and get it from us via Napster and or Macster.

Today and tomorrow, between 10am and 6pm GMT we're going to hook up one of our Macs to the web and leave it on all day (this is quite a big deal in the UK since we have to pay access time by the minute! Yeah, it's a joke isn't it?!). The track is on one of our machines in the library under the user name tomsmiled - hope you can find it! We've never done this before - we're new to a lot of this technology, so please bear with us, and we promise not to break the connection during a download. And if anyone would like us to hook up for longer than today and tomorrow, please let us know.

Courtney Love had it spot on with her speech - we don't write music to support a music industry, we write music so it can be heard and enjoyed by as many people as possible. That's our reward, and it has more value than any amount of money.

Thanks in advance for any who take part, and hope you enjoy it.

James, Tom and Griff

smiled

www.smiled.net



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