Why You Should Sell Out (ft. Greg Saunier)
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- Опубліковано 26 чер 2024
- As Marx once said, there's a lot to unpack here. Greg Saunier from Deerhoof is also in this episode!
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I watched every minute, and found this to be a very thought provoking video. The interview with Greg struck me as fascinating. I realized there may be a corollary between the music industry 20 years ago and online video creators now. Clearly this was a lot of work. Thanks for making it.
hey thanks for the comment! so glad you enjoyed the video. i'm big fan of your work :) indeed, the last year i've spent on youtube has inspired alot of the thinking that went into this video.
Yo SMD, could you do a video about the missiles you build some day?
This is the best dissertation on the tension between art and economics I have ever heard, thank you. It has taken me 58 years to arrive at a state of mind where I can like what I like. Everyone needs to take a step back and just relax, stop fighting, stop rationalizing and just make music.
Loving this video, I agree that it's much more important what your own experience with art is rather than determining whether or not it's "authentic" or "authentically made" by the artist, like with artists who don't write their own songs for example, or who switch to a pop sound after being notoriously experimental.
It also tends to be music that is very joyful, electronic, funny, or sexual that tends to be labeled inauthentic the most, with artists like Britney Spears, Doja Cat, or Mariah Carey's later songs like "Touch My Body," as opposed to her more "real" ballads earlier in her career.
There's so many aspects to a person that I don't think one sound, or one emotion can define a person, and it's sad that sad music is what is labelled as the most real by people, as if happiness, or sex, aren't part of people's lives too.
And while expressing one's self is a beautiful thing to do in art, there's also something really beautiful to me about making music with the intention of the listener's experience in mind, whether it's to make them dance, cry, or inspire them. It's like an act of service to the public
I wish I could explain in a short comment what it was like for me growing up in the late 70s, being a teen in the 80s and being too poor to afford colleges or unis, and in the 90s trying to make a career out of music back in those pre-Internet days. The TL:DR version is choosing whether to eat (often Ramen Noodles, sometimes dry) or putting what little money you made at a gig (playing the popular songs from the previous four decades) back into the band's coffers, saving up thousands of dollars to make a six-song demo of original music in a studio, and all of the time spent mailing those tapes to record labels with band photos and bio and all of that crap whilst still trying to get gigs, sometimes living in your car that never had more than a quarter tank of fuel in it, networking with every local musician by showing up at their shows, etc., etc.. That felt desperately authentic at the time. Ultimately, nobody cared then, nor now. Sad and so very true.
The Internet did change everything though. Despite the hardships I had, I do not envy the musicians of today. Very different, and probably a lot worse. But it's fantastic that anyone can put their music out there for anyone in the world to hear. Even if the whole world is about 20 people. :)
Gen Xer, here. I worked in a major record store from 91-96...
My recall of "selling out" wasn't so much avoiding making music that appealed to a lot of people - most artists want to get an audience - but you wanted to avoid taking money from Frito-Lay or GM or whomever. Make money from your work, from performing for the audience of people who come to see you, buy your albums or singles, etc. There's a naivete there, sure, but it was hopeful. As Saunier says, Cobain's death by suicide was a major shock.
And five years later, Moby sold the rights for every.single.song. from "Play" to advertisers.
The hope crashed. And then MP3s arrived, and everything changed.
Capitalism sucks.
Thanks for all the time involved in making this video! I appreciate your honest take on this complex topic.
Loved this video! So many great insights and the interview with greg at the end is like the cherry on top.
This was great, I don't know how I haven't subscribed to your channel earlier. And Greg is always an inspiration. Also hearing JLK's voice was a trip, I haven't seen Jane in forever!
This was a great discussion!
Awesome video and channel! Love from Brazil, Keep it up
Very cool and thoughtful! Thanks for making this :) I've got some thinking to do
Great video! Love the topic and insight!
I support your Patreon and I am more than pleased with your incredibly thoughtful and educational video here.
Great video! Thanks so much for making it.
omg a Lily Alexander voiceover, what an unexpected crossover for me
lol hi!
What a great video! You really present a strong case for a concept that is pretty much rarely considered.. My dad wrote a book with a forward devoted to the same idea for commercial illustration, is it art !
Nice work putting this episode together.
Happy holidays to you.
Awesome video, I'm a huge deerhoof fan, and a new subscriber
Your videos are an inspiration. Always looking forward to the next one!
thanks Travis!
This is a fantastic video, you deserve way more subs and views imo.
Hi Sarah. I've only just discovered your channel today and I'm really enjoying your videos. If you're curious, it was a search on Physical Modelling that brought me to you. It's going to take me a bit of time to get through your videos, but I just wanted to send you a quick note to encourage you to keep making more if that aligns with your current goals. You're real good at it. Thank you!
This was really great. Thank you.
Terrific exposition!
Thank you for putting words to this!
Watching this was very insightful. I always liked making pop, it always felt authentic to me, and it took me a long time to feel proud of it!
i....... this is incredible. applies to all artforms! thank you.
This is so good!
Pedantic note for 17:25: The drum machine on 'Strings of Life' - and most other techno and house tracks of the era - is the TR-909, not the 808, which is obviously better known for hip-hop and (more recently) trap. EDIT: Strings of Life was also made in 1987, not '85. Derrick May was ahead of his time, but not quite THAT far ahead.
I love how Greg talks about the governments potential role in investing in art and specifically music. Spotify will not change their model and it would be a miracle if users acted against their material interests (in an increasingly inequitable society) and boycotted the platform. Nationalizing Spotify is a good idea, and so are more grants and scholarships made available to musicians. Capitalism discourages a lot of the music that I like and I'd love to see smaller more niche artists be able to be paid for their work even if it's not popular across the broad population. Strangely enough, the way the Québec government invests in Francophone music is great! If only they did that for all musicians regardless of their perceived contribution to a nationalist political project!
This video is lovely. I came to a similar way of looking at things but I arrived there a little differently, so the reasoning here is super interesting to me (and of course very sound and insightful).
I'm younger than Greg but not by a whole lot, and I have to say that from my point of view the biggest difference, the main thing that caused the concept of selling out to be so pervasive in the 90s, was that there were actual subcultures in those days. I don't mean that in a "in my day" kind of way like arguing it was better. It wasn't better or worse, just different. Like, cultural capital? Knowing about "cool" things, being into any aspect of culture beyond a casual enjoyment? A lot of people just didn't care about it. Maybe they cared a little about being current somehow? But you didn't see frat boys at shows the way you do now. If you had an office job your boss didn't tell you about his favorite band. A few people were exceptions but generally no. So there was this bubble of music world, art world, culture world, and within that people's need to feel somehow virtuous took on a real life of its own. And there was nothing to break that little social scheme because most people's lives as fans and often even as musicians were incredibly insular.
But I definitely agree that Kurt Cobain kind of broke that bubble. In some ways Nirvana challenged that punk purity orthodoxy and in other ways they supported it ("corporate magazines still suck" and all that), but a lot of people were very taken aback (when he died) at that combination of loss and kind of injustice. Things just got super real super quickly and that reset a lot of ways of thinking.
I realize that this wasn't at all the point of this video, so I hope you'll forgive me for kind of busting in with my POV.
This is really interesting, thank you. ♥
This video was excellent, I feel like it really gave me a new perspective on the music industry
Can't say it gave me any hope for the future, but hey, it's not like my dreams of a music 'career' weren't crused a long time ago already... it's still a neat hobby and that's all it really needs to be I guess
Thank you sarah!!!!! v good video.
"Part 1: Selling Out"- *Ad begins* lmao
Fuck Spotify!
Omfg I love Adapatation
gregs opening line is amazing lol
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hahahahah what is goin on here
@@SoundsGoodChannel 🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯
I don't think it's fair to say that all or most people into experimental music are into it from a sense of superiority. This attitude exists across musical styles, people can be (and are) snobs about anything. I think privileging pop music as the so called "music of the masses" sounds like populism with a superiority complex. This doesn't mean I don't enjoy it myself, but it's one corner of music of many.
Authenticity is about a lot more than just being on a major label. But what it does consist of is a matter of much contention. Are musicians and composers trying new things out being obscurantist gatekeepers or simply not to your tastes?
Sure, the likes of Karlheinz Stockhausen (and Wendy Carlos for that matter) certainly were in incredibly privileged positions to have access to the synthesizers and electroacoustic labs they did. It's not like the Beatles or Miles Davis (both very popular artists) had universal acclaim for their fusions of electronic elements with the pop rock and jazz music they put out.
To me, "selling out" comes with it the implication of no longer making the art one wants to make or no longer feels any emotional connection to beyond paying the bills. To some extent I agree with the notion that having one's music in a commercial context is in itself a sign of lacking integrity. "Selling out" is not quite the same as "buying in".
Amazing☺
Public streaming! That would be great. But how would it be for it to be international? Would we need a world government? Oh, no! We need autonomous collective streaming! But we would still need ads to have revenue! And people would shout "defund this company! defund that one!" So many problems!
if we''re going to imagine scenarios like that where all the hard work has already been done - whatever geopolitical entities exist, an artist's ability to feed and care for themselves (and see their loved ones cared for) ideally wouldn't be based on metrics like that at all, and yeah people's access to / enjoyment of the arts can be nurtured in ways that look different from both the awful pre-napster industry or the techno-libertarian devaluation. but in the current/foreseeable real world, yeah any transition period will be messy. fortunately, humans collectively and our creative drives can survive the music industry being a mess - no one in the capitalist-dominated world has ever known a music industry that wasn't an absolute high speed shitshow in some fashion. getting from the current mess to a considerably better one likely won't ever have much to do with our decisions as musicians and consumers. it's definitely not hopeless but our fates are fundamentally tied to finding solutions to the much broader issues of exploitation and austerity on the dying planet covered with US/NATO military bases.
food for thought...
Donâ Arcccccaaaaaa!!
I wonder if socialised public streaming would find a way for niche artists to receive a livable wage. I don't believe every musical word "needs" to have the potential of becoming massively successful in order to be important enough to deserve Survival - but then a certain degree of 'commercial success' is needed in order to not starve.
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Being anti consumerism/selling is, in a way, a privileged stance, while trying to only generate music that is guaranteed to be likeable is demoralizing and ultimately probably futile. I guess becoming ultra rich in music would give an artist the option of essentially becoming a label, which somehow keeps the problem of 'profit' alive. I think it would be helpful to figure out how to think towards a work-time-based wage rather than shoving the final product into the commerce sector. It's absurd that, for musicians, work time >costs< them money. The point about being _working class_ musicians really nailed what I feel is wrong with the way we/society/economy/etc conceptualises music. National culture ministeriums often want to exclude pop or nonacademic/nontraditional avenues while mainstream industries have little consideration for niche acts; in an ideal future, some of these divides would be dissolved because commercial success doesn't equate nor negate worth.
I feel like your framing of Dylan going electric is all wrong.
Dylan's folk music did _not_ first find an audience in the "countercultural hippie movement of the sixties." If you take a look at the audience at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, you won't see a single person that you'd recognize as a hippie. They're all clean-cut young people wearing nice neat clothes. Heck, some of them are wearing ties.
The audience that you seem to be saying Dylan was selling out to by going electric didn't really exist yet in 1965. The group that the people mad at him for selling out had in their minds was probably the Beatles, and the pre-_Rubber Soul_ Beatles at that. They were thinking of all the vapid screaming teenage girls who'd gone to Shea Stadium in 1963.
They didn't think that Dylan was selling out to the counterculture, because the people attending the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 _were_ the counterculture. Pete Seeger, the guy who invited Dylan to Newport in the first place, was a key counterculture figure, a one-time CPUSA member who went in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee and refused to name names.
I know from this distance it seems like 1965 and 1967 were basically the same thing. But it was a time of wild, rapid change, one in which two years made an enormous difference.
Most of my music heroes are sell-outs....not in a detrimental way abiding by that label. They make whatever genre they SOLD OUT TO more palatable and more accessible for snobs like myself. Look up OLIVER. He makes music for the likes of Transgender pop star Kim Petras, Did a remix for Tove Lo, Beck, Chromeo and...He DJs underground music. So they label him a sellout but...he has his toes in both those worlds and I respect that
I can't give it away on 7th Avenue
This industry’s in tatters! (Shattered sha-doobie)
2 10 20 26
A form of government more focused on equality will need to have a solid form of incentives built in, in order to encourage people to do their best work. That’s one thing that capitalism at least has going for it. It could be that fame could be a strong enough incentive.
More handouts?!? Who will really benefit from it and doesn't it create another form of dependence?
I don't really think capitalism is as good at this as you claim. Look at apple products for example. They aren't designed to be good so much as to sell, hence how fragile they are, how much they build in easy to break and lose expensive accessories. I think this is true for most things capitalism creates. Jon Deer Tractors with drm is another thing that comes to mind. Capitalism encourages people to make things that enrich the individual making them, and that really lines up with what is "best" for everyone else. I think that is kinda core to the issue Sarah is talking about here.
@@malice__doll don't confuse classic capitalism with corporatism aka big corp oligarchy. You probably don't remember, but there was a time 20-30 yrs ago, where the market for computers was way more diverse and Apple was struggling to keep up with competitors like Commodore, Atari, Sun or DEC.
@@malice__doll Besides that ... I really know how's like to live and grow up in a socialist shithole.
When the reality of self support and economics hits hard ....
Maybe there should be a Union for musicians, with titles, guaranteed salary, and a focused lobbying group to protect musicians from exploitation.
@@ChrisLeeW00 not really! Unions make for the most part things even worse, are also prone to corruption and - by the way! - socialism will never cease to fail over and over again.
Meanwhile capitalism is literally destroying the world
Here is what capitalism really does to music ua-cam.com/video/zk872ERRVxA/v-deo.html