Marilyn Manson talks about the record industry

Last 17th Marilyn Manson gave an exclusive interview to MansonUSA [1], which I recommend you to read. If not, at least take this comments he made about the record industry:

With the recording industry in shambles, certain high profile artists such as Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails have favored a strictly online venue to selling their music. Certain artists are providing people the option of paying what they want for a record. How do you feel about the current state of the music industry and this new approach to selling music?

I think that Prince really pioneered that concept the best but it just wasn’t at the time of the technology and of the audience to understand it. I think he was the first. I wish I could have that luxury and that's the difference. Radiohead and NIN have been freed from their slavery of the record label. I don’t have that luxury. I have a record contract. Anyone who is just starting a band can go make a website and sell their own song. Someone that has been making music for years would love to do that but they just can't because they are under a record contract. That's the one thing I hope people on the outside can see. I would love nothing more than to do that - not even because of the money, the record industry, or specifically my record company. I know you've heard Trent complain it's the same record company, but I'm not going to fight for the same reasons. I just don’t think they understand what to do with me and I think they've proven that very well. I think that they always want to take what I give them and make it a watered down version. It’s not what I give them and I think that then they're surprised about that. First of all, you can water down what I do and give it to the radio or MTV and they are still not going to walk away with a good taste in their mouth. I try to explain to them to just give people what they want, which is what I created. Smells Like Children is a good example. I can’t give you enough examples and that's why my soul has been removed from the whole concept of making music videos. They tear out everything that people want. They don't understand that I wouldn’t be who I am if I wasn’t me. They want to tone me down so that I can be more like new bands that they’ve shown my record to and said, “Be like this, but not so scary.”

It’s a fucked up world. I'm not bitter about it, just tired of it. That was half the reason I didn’t want to make music anymore. I'm not discouraged because I think, first of all, my motivation has never been to make money. It's been to be able to do this, have this be how I survive and how I live. I never asked for much and I just want to do this and enjoy it. The way that I enjoy music the most is performing live and record companies can’t put their hands on that. That makes me happy, so that's one thing that really makes me smile when it’s all over with. I can control that. The only people that can stop me are the Police. I have no idea what’s going to happen next, I really don’t. I'm going to make the most extreme possible record that they could never want from me. It's going to be the best thing and they'll figure out every way possible for it to not be a hit. But have I ever wanted to be a hit? No! Who wants to be right next to, Rhianna and Jessica Simpson? I don’t want that. I want people to hear it. I’m not trying to pretend I want to be the secret that's in the closet. People come to the show and that is something these other bands that are on MTV that play one video a day don’t know about. That's something that you really have to earn and that's what fans are really about. That’s something that I’m really happy about and I’m very lucky that I have that much dedication from people who like what I do.

As for me, I'm still not buying his stuff while he's under that hideous record contract.

[1] - http://www.mansonusa.com/everyone_will_suffer_now/

Missing the Gig

Against all odds, there I was on the shopping mall next to my workplace, aiming to have some hot meal in this rainy day, sigh a little and just relax for the night. There was something odd in my surroundings, but it wasn't until I got next to the ATM machine and get a couple of notes that I noticed. The place was full of dressed-in-black people , and I got to recognise quite a few faces of people to whom I don't speak for to long. I didn't get recognised, and was somewhat glad of it: it was the wrong evening to get me started about why I wasn't in the same table as them. Before ordering the meal I started by asking for a beer while cursing not to have some liquor at home - already planning for my evening at home.

For regular readers of this blog isn't probably hard to conceive, but for casual readers, specially those who know me a bit more, it still comes as a surprise that I refuse to feed Universal's pockets, even when we're talking about Marilyn Manson. It came a real shock for lots of people the fact that I don't own Marilyn's latest album (that, in fact, I only listened to once, and in far from good conditions), and for others (SMS's will start falling soon, for sure) the fact that Marilyn Manson is doing a gig in Portugal and I'm not in the front row. This isn't surely what to expect from the Portuguese guy with the biggest Marilyn Manson music collection.

The reasons are simple - really - and all come to one: while I like Marilyn Manson and even admire him for a lot of things (like the way he absorbs so much the huge amount of thoughts he gets from the books and movies he gets contact with), I refuse to give money to those I despise, and he really should know better about his deal with the assholes at Interscope - at least have a thought or two about the acts of his friend (or is it foe? they're always switching...) Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails... After all the deal came from "his" Nothing Records.

So I got home, and I had the rest of the night planned. Fired up Amarok and started playing some yet to be released Merankorii tracks, quickly put some clothes into the washing machine and walked to the soon-to-be studio, stared and stopped. A room full of bags, boxes and "stuff". Started digging. Some home-made liquor... cool, it will be handy later. What's this bag? Oh, DVD's... A couple of Marilyn Manson DVD's here, but I can't even think of it, just put them in their new place, and keep digging. And finally, among tons of yet unpacked CD's, some pieces of my Marilyn Manson collection. They start getting form once again, now in the new shelves, until I find the album I was looking for: the European edition of Marilyn Manson's EP "Smells Like Children" (the CD that still plays, bought second-hand and really cheap), probably one of the most misunderstood works of his.

Already playing, I slowly walk towards the liquor, but slowly to let the music enter my body. There's something about my relation with music that I still have to work on to be ready to try to define it. Next comes "Mechanical Animals", but I'm not in the mood of setting up the record player to play the vinyl version, so I stick with the scratched CD until it shows the first signs of defect. Follows Holy Wood (In the Shadows of the Valley of Death). Maybe after I'll be ready for the live recordings of his latest gig in Portugal. No "collector items" today. Maybe they shouldn't even belong to me anymore. Yet, he's smart. I still hope he'll give'em the finger, and get me to put money in his pockets again.

It's raining out there. It will be a quite nice evening after all. Above all, I'm glad to be here, not there.

AllOfMP3 dead? Long Live MP3 City!

Today, in a couple of hours, the new Russian law that will make AllOfMP3 illegal will be passed and activated. A good description about what is AllOfMP3 and what's the case behind it is here:

AllofMP3.com is a small Russian company which has become the international poster child for attacks on independent music download sites.

By itself, it probably doesn't represent much of a genuine threat to the labels or studios. But if it's allowed to survive and prosper, its existence would certainly encourage other entrepreneurs to adopt the same marketing approach - DRM-free downloads at reasonable prices - which would result in serious competition for the corporate cartels which, until the Net became universally adopted, had been able to control virtually everything ordinary people saw or heard.

Competition is good: it promotes free choice. But neither 'choice' nor 'competition' are words found in cartel lexicons. So a massive, and ongoing, multi-million-dollar campaign has been mounted against AllofMP3.com by the cartels, with the record labels to the fore.

Leading it on behalf of the labels and other vested interests is the US administration, which has brought its full weight down on a handful of people in another country who dare to compete with Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG, with the major movie studios and software houses lurking darkly in the background.

In rich irony, only Warner Music can be said to be truly American. And even it's run by Canadian. The other three members of the Big 4 music cartel are EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG, based in Britain, France, Japan and Germany, respectively.

In other words, the US government is generously spending money provided by American tax payers to help four foreign companies maintain an iron grip on a market whose openness would benefit American artists as much, if not more, than artist in other countries.

Nor does it appear anyone in either the United States Trade Representative Office, which is behind much of the US-mounted pressure on AllofMP3.com, nor music industry 'trade' organizations, such as the IFPI (International Federation of Phonographic Industry), have made any effort to talk directly with AllofMP3.com executives to find a way to reach an accord.

But if you want to see how high they go, take a look at this: according to Reuters, US Trade Representative Susan Schwab said:

"I have a hard time imagining Russia becoming a member of the WTO and having a Web site like that [AllofMP3.com] up and running that is so clearly a violation of everyone's intellectual property rights"

Of course that what is legal and what is not all depends on the standing legislation, and AllOfMP3 are under Russian laws.

While DCC's Russell McOrmond (DCC is Digital Copyright Canada, Canada's RIAA) says that

While AllOfMP3.com may be perfectly legal for Russian customers, it is not legal for them to sell to foreign customers. Copyright and licensing need to be analysed domestically, and you can't say that what is legal in Russia allows you to do something in Canada or the USA

Any lawyer will tell you that that's not true: AllOfMP3 is legal on Russia, and their license lets them sell worldwide (according to their exportation laws). The only way you can make illegal for Canadian or American people to buy stuff from AllOfMP3 is for those countries to actively forbid those transactions. In that case, their citizens are forbidden to buy from AllOfMP3, but still AllOfMP3 have the right to sell their music to Americans or Canadians.

Anyway, nothing of that really matters, since Russia will change their laws today, to ilegalize AllOfMP3.

I thought of changing this blog's layout to a black theme for a day, or talking about sweet, nice and cool alternative online stores, like Amie Street. But that wouldn't really be an article that would piss RIAA off, if they were to read this, right?

So, I've searched and came out with a better music service to talk about: MP3 City. First of all, MP3 City sells mp3 files, no .wmv's and such. The files are all DRM-free, and untagged. Like in AllOfMP3, here you can find lot's of kinds of music, from underground stuff until major label's artists. Damn, you can already buy there Marilyn Manson's "Eat Me, Drink Me", an album that is only to be released in four days, or Paul McCartney's "Memory Almost Full", also to be released next week. And you know what? $1.76 is the price for Marilyn Manson's album, $2.08 for Paul McCartney's. No, I'm not talking about one track, I talking about the whole album, in DRM-free MP3 files encoded at 320kbps.

As cool as AllOfMP3, right? Cooler in fact, since MP3 City is also legal with Author's distribution rights granted by State Enterprise "Ukrainian Agency on Copyright and Related Rights" (UACRR), and, as far as I know, Ukrain isn't (still) being pressed to change their laws.

Eat this, suckers!

Rarity Shelf

I couldn't be less than happy: and this pictures show you the reason.

Let me just give you a small introduction to why:

• As I told here, I'm the guy I know of with the biggest Marilyn Manson collection I know. My Mechanical Animals CD, the n'th I've owned, is scratched, and I was sad.
  
• The best Mechanical Animals edition I've allways seen was the one you're seeing in the pictures. I've ordered it 6 years ago, with a simple call: "if you get it, new, for less than 50€, I want it". I never got it.
  
• Today, I got a package with it inside. This pictures are from MY copy of the vynil.
  
• I didn't pay for it, it was offered. A BIG THANK YOU TO YOU-KNOW-WHO-YOU-ARE ;-)
  
• This edition is considered 5/5 in rarity.
• The only copy I know of it, new, on sale, costs $85,00. Plus Shipping costs.