http://politics.reddit.com/info/2xbvx/comments

if you are so inclined...

Sales at the record store have been in a tail spin. And the Artist only gets a buck a CD anyways. People are getting their music off the internet one way or another. Artists can sell their music off their own website for a buck and break even with what the labels will give you so Radiohead isn't taking a big financial risk. The issue is whether RH can get more publicity by giving their music away then they can by signing up with a major label. I would think so.

There's a new business model. Give the music away and make your money on the concerts. And the thirty dollar t-shirts and the five dollar beer. Well new is a relative term since the Grateful Dead has been doing this since before Garcia needed to shave, but now a lot of bands are doing this.

RobertInTucson

I haven't escaped from reality. I have a daypass.

Can you imagine if The Oil Drum made a blog post only once every four years, and people had to pay to read it?

It would have to be equivalent to The Killing Joke (Monty Python version, of course) for people to cough up any money. Instead, like most infotainment, the flood of products and alternatives has caused a price collapse.

Heheh. I have even posted in my blog about that. Radiohead is also my favourite band. After hearing some of their musics, the other bands seem so naive and amateurish that I can't hear anything else for a while.

For one take, there is the issue of the labels going to die. The internet is going to subtitute them (or has the big potential), and they are going down the plug.

On the other hand, iTunes doesn't seem so well after this move by Radiohead highlighted the big flaw in Apple's strategy: they are *still* too stuck with the labels to porsuit new experiences by the fans and buyers. It's gonna backfire on them (Radiohead went to talks with iTunes for them to distribute the album, but they (RH) required that Apple sold the entire album and not single musics. Apple did not allow such buying experience, and so RH quit them).

Should this be a call for the total destruction of mediatizers? No. It's a one shot thing. It works for Radiohead, as I, being a common eMule music pirate (sue me at will), am really considering paying Radiohead for their music. The amount of respect they showed I think will go well with all of their listeners (out with the rape of paying 15 dollars per album, which is ridiculous). Most will not pay a dime, but I think they'll see good payings too.

My all time favorite band.

I used to read their forum and Thom would post regularly(99% sure it was him, really got on a rant sometimes that reminded me of TOD) and he/they are PO aware and very up on the current issues facing the world.

STOP WHISPERING - START SHOUTING!!!!!!!!
pablo honey

The consumerist culture is a truly new development in the history of human philosphies. This is the first culture based on the premise that Greed is Good, although there have been bouts of materialism in the last hundred and fifty years of the species existance on this planet, this is the first to totally abandon any spiritual values for one of the Deadly Sins.

It seems to me that we are suffering from an attitude problem as much as anything. Yes, the population has grown so that we are running short on absolute quantities of many physical substances.The average American uses 25 bbl/per year per capita in oil and gas, the average Canadian 26/bbl.

Is our actual standard of living going to decrease by cutting our energy useage? When its doing things like insulating windows, doors and attics or driving a hybrid coupe or sedan to the marina to play with your boat, rather than driving a chrysler SUV with a 440 cubic inch engine all the time so you can tow the boat to the lake one weekend a month doesn't strike me as a decrease in quality of life even though the absolute btu gasoline energy use is decreased by at least 1/3rd. And yet, according to the people that judge GDP as a product of BTU use, a person is at least 1/3rd more impoverished.

Although my example is a lot more extreme than real life for many people, the same is true for replacing a gas water heater with an on-demand electric water heater, which I did last week.I should pay off the cash difference within two years, but although its saving energy, its not going to decrease my lifestyle by using fewer BTU's.

The same is true through all areas of my life. I can only wear one pare of pants at one, and need no more than 3 or 4 pair, I own probably a dozen pair. I can sleep in only one bed, with only one woman (except in my vivid fantasy life) I own too big a house, with too much storage for stuff I use only occasionally. Although I'm middle class, I'm fantasticly wealthy by the standards of either history or half the people on the planet.

Because, what is real wealth? Loving people and being loved by them, having a decent diet, access to heatlth care and stimulating art and ideas, reasonable clothing and the money and freedom to travel is my definition, and I'm there as are most of us, pretty wealth, although impoverished by the standards of greed. Bob Ebersole

I love RH. It's not like I can play an instrument or anything, but if I were able to make music good enough to sell, I'd give it away. Here are my reasons:

The whole modern music business has a history of rapine and plunder, from the sheet music and edison cylinder days up until now. It would feel great to give it away!

Would I as an artist really need to make millions of dollars (or die trying to) to be happy? If I could play an instrument well I'd be so fsckin happy I'd play for folks all day for free, just feed me. Honestly, a decent living is all I'd ask, no need for the stress of an "indecent" one.

Now we get more esoteric....

Music is our language. Beyond a decent living for the artist, I'd feel dirty taking more. And I'd gladly release books, tapes, etc., for a reasonable price showing people *exactly* how I play this or that, no more guesses or supposedly accurate transcriptions of riffs that aren't.

Any halfway decent artist can make a killing on lessons anyway. Don't get me started on music teachers, let's just say they make good money.

Now, I'd like to suggest that bands/artists will eventually come around to what I'll call the "religion" model. No one will charge me a dime to become, say, Catholic. If I WANT to, I'm welcome to buy those Catholic candles, St. Chris medals, all kinds of Catholic stuff. Same goes for other sects and churches. The basics are free and then one is free to pay or not pay for the frills as one likes. With radio, music started going this way. (Those of us old enough will remember the "album shows" on FM radio late at night, with a pause for you to turn over your tape!) It's just going more this way lately with internet as the new radio.

PS I have no idea why the band calls itself Radiohead but that name sure works on a number of levels.

Its a tension thats been there for a while...

FOR FREE Lyrics
Artist: Joni Mitchell
Album: Ladies of The Canyon (1970)

I slept last night in a good hotel
I went shopping today for jewels
The wind rushed around in the dirty town
And the children let out from the schools
I was standing on a noisy corner
Waiting for the walking on green
Across the street he stood
And he played real good
On his clarinet, for free

Now me I play for fortunes
And those velvet curtain calls
I've got a black limousine
And two gentlemen
Escorting me to the halls
And I play if you have the money
Or if you're a friend to me
But the one man band
By the quick lunch stand
He was playing real good, for free

Nobody stopped to hear him
Though he played so sweet and high
They knew he had never
Been on their T.V.
So they passed his music by
I meant to go over and ask for a song
Maybe put on a harmony...
I heard his refrain
As the signal changed
He was playing real good, for free

They aren't the first to try this. There are gourmet restaurants that operate this way: you pay what you think the meal is worth. Supposedly, most people pay more than similar restaurants charge for similar meals. Presumably because they don't want to be thought cheap.

It's different online, of course, where people are anonymous. But Stephen King did this for his serial. Riding the Bullet, I think it was. He threatened not to finish writing it is he didn't get enough contributions. There were a lot of freeloaders, but people who wanted to read the whole thing paid extra to make up for them.

In the case of music, the artists get so little of the money that they may actually make more more selling direct...once they have an audience.

I dunno, it's kind of a microcosm of our economy. It used to be that if you had talent, you could make a reasonable living: as an actor, or musician, or baseball player, or writer, etc. Now you have a very few who make obscene amounts of money, while most of the rest can't make a living at it.

This is a small volley across the bow of the conventional 'market' system. I won't go so far as to say that Radiohead is adhering to ecological economics principles (e.g. full cost pricing), but this theme of 'what its worth?' could challenge the system. How we value music which we basically get for free is a very small example of how we value ecosystem services, fresh air, biodiversity, etc.

Of course, we very quickly run into Garret Hardins Tragedy of the Commons.

The gift economy is what comes to mind. Good for them to try. It will probably work too, because there are enough people that appreciate the direction. Worrying about freeloaders is "business as usual". Working with those who want to move into the new paradigm is more important.

cfm in Gray, ME

marguerite manteau-rao
http://lamarguerite.wordpress.com

What the Professor describes here is a phenomenon that is here to stay, and will only get bigger and bigger, starting with digital content of any kind. It is on everybody's lips in the (Silicon) Valley where I live. I looooove the concept. So elegant. Kind of like NPR pledge drives. Don't ask me why, but my mind went straight to utility curves. We all have different things that make us happy, and the same thing will score differently along the happiness index depending on who consumes that thing. This is making my head spin! There are so many angles, so many scenarios that can ensue.

What nobody's mentioned so far is that "free" distribution of music on The Internet requires 24/7 servers with 24/7 air conditioning, but more importantly, requires highly reliable 24/7 phone service to every consumer, who must also buy a new computer at least every ten years (computers don't last longer)

Take the number of consumers, divide by ten, and that's how many computers must be landfilled every year, to support "free" distribution of music on The Internet.

If we assume that eventually, all Chinese will count as "consumers," China must landfill one billion divided by ten = 100,000,000 computers a year, every year, until forever. Assuming population and standards of consumption don't grow, of course.

The Internet is an energy-consuming monster. Of course it is far less so than doing all the same stuff physically in person, but since that's physically impossible, it's not a good point of comparison.

The Internet is an energy-consuming monster, compared with how we got along before fossil fuels.

Minstels, like Pete Seeger are always quick to remind us that the fiddler always got the warmest place by the fire when the only music was music we made ourselves. And I know that this is still true today if you find music making on a small scale. Doomers might want to recommend music lessons.

What does this have to do with energy? Music only exists as an experience. You can store up a hundred copies of a CD, but you only have music if you take the time to play it. And, you can really only listen to one of those copies at a time. Performers come back to the same song and make it real all over again in a new way. Listeners will hear the same song in a different context and get a different experience, or maybe, numinously, crytallize a memory of something that happened when they heard the song previously. With music, everything is passing and never the same twice, like the saying about never stepping in the same river twice.

Our energy use is different. We try to make the river freeze so that we may do exactly the same thing over and over again with no change. If it ain't broke, don't fix it is the kind of thing we might say about a toilet seat or an oil well. Unlike a song, when you use oil, it is gone and you can't play it again in a richer way or a new context. It exist not so much in its flame but in its storage tank, ready for use.

The direction we are heading though makes energy a little more like music. Sticking a windmill in the breeze or a solar panel in the sunshine is catching a flow rather than filling a storage vessel. I would not be too surprised if some people didn't start naming their panels the way Muddy Waters names his guitar. Renewables, like music, give a feeling of participation that you just don't get from stacking up the bones of the Earth in piles for burning.

And, like music, renewable energy is for sharing. If the flow you are tapping gives more than you're using, sharing with your neighbor is a pretty natural thing to do. When you might not think, well, I didn't use all the gas in my tank today, might as well give it away, the thought might cross you mind when your windmill is producing energy at the same rate but your kids have grown and moved. Radiohead seems like they want to avoid being old and in the way. So, they'll just share and help out for a bit. Maybe we'll stop being surprised by this when we are all participating in a flow of energy rather than worrying so much about tommorrow that generosity no longer seems second nature. Pull up a seat close to the fire and sing us a song of wind and sun and rain, maybe just a box of rain like the Grand Coulee....

Chris

I think the main thing this string has taught me is something about the demographic here at TOD.

Most folks over 35 have never heard of Radiohead. I have, but only because I try to keep up with alternative music, but for my age group that is rare. Most folks I know and work with take the position that no real music has been made since the 1970's, and TimeLife oldies collections and oldies radio give them all they ever need in the way of music.

I now understand why I often feel very alone in discussions of the events of the 1970's energy crisis. Of course, many folks here simply cannot believe the scale of the drop in energy production and consumption in those days. So far, we have seen only "measurement error" scale changes in the 2000's by comparison, with the exception of the North Sea, which has indeed seen a considerable sustained drop since 2000.

The other day, Robert Rapier in one of his best posts recently, said that if we did not choose to act, we are simply compounding what will be a miserable situation for our children. I sighed. Of course, we have been around this track before, and chose to do exactly that in the 1970's and 1980's. There were those then who warned that the North Sea would not last forever, and that putting our fate in the hands of the Persian Gulf nations could lead to a strategic nightmare and eventually, the death of young Americans in the region. Even if the Persian Gulf oil would last in a sustained way for a century, our money would have trouble staying up, and we would finally be bled to death.

The other day, I saw reported that the U.S. dollar had declined some 37% in the last five years. Take crude oil at $82 dollars per barrel, and strike 37% from that, and what per barrel oil price do you get? Robert Bolger, the father of index mutual funds, said that the combined income for the "financial services" industry, an essentially parasitic industry was now more than the combined income of the energy industry. What we are seeing is as much, possibly much more, a money shortage as an oil shortage.

Closing thought: If you asked people to pay what they really thought oil was worth to them, using the Radiohead example, how much do you think most would pay? Anywhere near what it is actually worth? What if they knew if they misjudged the price in what they paid, the next shipment wouldn't arrive for them to use? Now that's a thought experiment.
(edited for correction)
RC

Siwmae (Hiya) Oilmnanbob! The vivid examples you post above, Bob, are going in the right direction, sure. But listen: I live in one of the over-rich countries of the world, and even from my viewpoint, your setup AFTER your significant energy savings leaves me thinking: "Jeez, Bob seems to have an even over-richer life....)

I was down at the do-it-yourself car-breaker's yard yesterday, getting a couple of replacement parts for my partner's just-acquired secondhand car. (We live seven miles apart, for the sake of continuing marital harmony, which means we each have a car. Damn! But at least I go more by bike than by car) The rule in that yard is that all carcases are stacked two high, and no more, for safety. So there I am working on the bottom car of two of what USAmericans might call super-compacts. No wheels on either, just the carcases. I needed to lift the front end to get at a couple of bolts. I'm no weakling, but without jacks I could make not the slightest movement. It came home to me: the truly astonishing amount of weight we haul about with us every time we get behind a wheel, even for the most unimportant journey. This is quite apart from the thousands of barrelsworth of embodied fossil energy lying all around me as casually cast-off metal and glass stuff. You can see, can't you, why I have this near-fanatical hatred of the whole damned SUV idiocy, which is like a still-growing epidemic here -- for just a short while longer (Britain became a net importer of oil and natgas last year; and we have sixty million people crammed into a small island that can support, oh, maybe five million in anything like ecological balance, if we practised a really sophisiticated level of permaculture across our whole landscape; goodbye to the pathologically-obese life, pretty soon here, I think).

On the other hand, when I go wilderness walking with my Turkish shepherd dog buddy (well, what passes for wilderness in Britain) every single thing I'm going to need for the next couple of days comes with us on my back.

The drastically smaller weight carried -- and hence the energy saved -- is vastly different. Yet sitting up there on the mountain, it comes home to me again just how hugely -- and unfairly -- energy-privileged my life is even then. I'm one of the Pampered Twenty Percent of the world's human population. In my absurd country I'm classed as living below the poverty line. Yet my life is easy, and oversupplied with everything I really need, and quite a few extras, particularly music, wonderful, transcendental music, all day, everyday, freely on tap. To the Abused and Deprived Eighty Percent, I still live like a lolling prince, surrounded by servants and services ad lib, casually drawing down excess energy on demand as if there's no tomorrow. And this is including in the energy reckoning the lo-tech atmospheric-carbon-resequestering work I do to make terra-preta soil for my permaculture garden.

I think I still have a way to go before I've found anything like the truly ecologically-innocent lifestyle. But at least enlightening discussions like this on TOD, which so far you can only find on the net, are awakening me to that fact. Plodding on, hey Bob, as the ultimate storm gathers!

Oh shit! It's time for me to get in my super-compact VW and drive me and 150 pounds of tools and 130 pounds of shepherd dog over to the yard again. The pampered life. Damn! Cofion gorau (Best remembrances), Rhisiart Gwilym

How DOES this tie in with energy?

In basic terms it suggests disintermediation, no drive to maximise profits, the desire to do something slightly different. You can see how those types of concept could play into one possible energy future.

However that freedom comes from the position Radiohead are in. If they were unknown it wouldn't work since they would have no fan base to buy their product. The model works because of circumstances.

In similar terms, distributed energy generation, growth-agnostic business models, etc. are only possible because of the structures and capabilities that have been grown through centralisation, economies of scale and the robber barons. As such, ideas which suggest "we'll just replace the existing economic system, go back to an agrarian idyll" miss the point. To be viable it is required that there be an evolutionary route from where we are to where we get to that at all stages is in some way better than what is left behind. That in turn means timing is critical. If you can buy gas for 70cents alternative technologies are certain to be less attractive. If gas is rising 70cents a year, you can transition - at the right time - to alternatives that deal with this key fault.

Given that many of the effects and government/commercial reactions to peak oil can be predicted, it should be possible to delineate alternatives and chains of alternatives that match the evolution of the energy market. What that means is that whole swathes of energy futures are closed off, since there is no route between here and there. Equally, the timescales and durations are important, since change takes time. Relatively simple change, from centralised record companies to band based distribution is taking decades.

Forget considering Peak Oil as a way to get back to some past and consider the opportunities that do, and will, actually exist and what that means for where can go.

Since this thread is about music, and it seems I'm not the only one to feel the urge to post some lyrics, here goes. I'm not a big fan of Radiohead, although they're OK. My favourite musician is Tom Russell, and here's a great (and recent) song by him. I remember immigration, minutemen etc. have been discussed here at TOD before, so it's not totally OT. BTW he lives in El Paso.

WHO’S GONNA BUILD YOUR WALL?
by Tom Russell

I‘ve got 800 miles of open border – right outside my door.
There’s minute men in little pick up trucks who’ve decleared their own damn war.
Now the government wants to build a barrier like old Berlin 8 feet tall –
But if uncle Sam sends the illegals home who’s gonna build the wall?

WHO’S GONNA BUILD YOUR WALL BOYS? WHO’S GONNA MOW YOUR LAWN? WHO’S GONNA COOK YOUR MEXICAN FOOD WHEN YOUR MEXICAN MAID IS GONE? WHO’S GONNA WAX THE FLOORS TONIGHT DOWN AT THE LOCAL MALL?
WHO’S GONNA WASH YOUR BABY‘S FACE? WHO’S GONNA BUILD YOUR WALL?

Now I ain’t got no politics so don’t lay that rap on me.
Left wing, right wing, up wing, down wing, I see strip malls from sea to shining sea.
It’s the fat cat white developer who’s created this whole damn squall.
It’s a pyramid scheme of dirty jobs, and who’s gonna build your wall?

WHO’S GONNA BUILD YOUR WALL BOYS? WHO’S GONNA MOW YOUR LAWN? WHO’S GONNA COOK YOUR MEXICAN FOOD WHEN YOUR MEXICAN MAID IS GONE? WHO’S GONNA WAX THE FLOORS TONIGHT DOWN AT THE LOCAL MALL?
WHO’S GONNA WASH YOUR BABY‘S FACE? WHO’S GONNA BUILD YOUR WALL?

We’ve got fundamentalist moslems, we’ve got fundamentalist jews, we’ve got fundamentalist christians-
They‘ll blow the whole thing up for you.
But as I travel around this big old world, there’s one thing that I most fear.
It’s a white man in a golf shirt with a cell phone in his ear.

WHO’S GONNA BUILD YOUR WALL BOYS? WHO’S GONNA MOW YOUR LAWN?
WHO’S GONNA COOK YOUR MEXICAN FOOD WHEN YOUR MEXICAN MAID IS GONE? WHO’S GONNA WAX THE FLOORS TONIGHT DOWN AT THE LOCAL MALL?
WHO’S GONNA WASH YOUR BABY‘S FACE? WHO’S GONNA BUILD YOUR WALL?

(sorry about the caps, that was copy and paste)
You can listen to this song, FOR FREE, at
http://www.myspace.com/russelltom

Last March Tom Russell was in Finland and I saw him play a few songs in my local pub. I had planned to talk to him about Peak Oil, but unfortunately there were so many other people willing to talk to him that I didn't even bother trying.