Wilco on Music and its Future
If you don't fight it, it can help you!
"The band Wilco and its quiet, haunted leader, Jeff Tweedy, is something different. After its Warner label, Reprise, decided that the group's fourth album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, was no good, Wilco dumped them and released the tracks on the Internet. The label was wrong. The album was extraordinary, and a sold-out 30-city tour followed. This success convinced Nonesuch Records, another Warner label, to buy the rights back - reportedly at three times the original price. The Net thus helped make Wilco the success it has become. But once back in Warner's favor, many wondered: Would Wilco forget the Net?
"'Music,' he explained, 'is different' from other intellectual property. Not Karl Marx different - this isn't latent communism. But neither is it just 'a piece of plastic or a loaf of bread.' The artist controls just part of the music-making process; the audience adds the rest. Fans' imagination makes it real. Their participation makes it live. 'We are just troubadours,' Tweedy told me. 'The audience is our collaborator. We should be encouraging their collaboration, not treating them like thieves.'"
Wired-Wilco
"The band Wilco and its quiet, haunted leader, Jeff Tweedy, is something different. After its Warner label, Reprise, decided that the group's fourth album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, was no good, Wilco dumped them and released the tracks on the Internet. The label was wrong. The album was extraordinary, and a sold-out 30-city tour followed. This success convinced Nonesuch Records, another Warner label, to buy the rights back - reportedly at three times the original price. The Net thus helped make Wilco the success it has become. But once back in Warner's favor, many wondered: Would Wilco forget the Net?
"'Music,' he explained, 'is different' from other intellectual property. Not Karl Marx different - this isn't latent communism. But neither is it just 'a piece of plastic or a loaf of bread.' The artist controls just part of the music-making process; the audience adds the rest. Fans' imagination makes it real. Their participation makes it live. 'We are just troubadours,' Tweedy told me. 'The audience is our collaborator. We should be encouraging their collaboration, not treating them like thieves.'"
Wired-Wilco
posted by NBT at 11:17
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