Artists and record labels give away content in exchange for exposure.

The outlets granting it attain a critical mass of users, which subsequently makes them more attractive for artists and record labels seeking audiences. Network effects result in concentration. Popular outlets will usually demand exclusivity from their content feeders, so as to distinguish themselves from their competitors.

Some outlets monetise their audiences, either directly through advertising and merchandise, or indirectly through promotional activities such as nightclubs, gigs, remixes and DJing. In some cases, their position as ‘hubs’ for new talent (and credibility with audiences) enables them to set up their own publishing operations, which they can market directly through their high profile distribution channels. More ethereally, a position of power, visibility and credibility is a reward in itself.

It’s a hidden economy, with its own special dynamics and cycles. Leading outlets need to make sure that they are at the cutting edge of what’s happening. They have to own established trends and genres, and pioneer new ones. The best way to do this is to adopt a portfolio approach where you throw stuff against the wall to see if it sticks. This requires flexibility and scale – a good eye for what may be big, and a constant stream of content to place enough bets, and develop those that show potential.

In a user-generated world, this creates self-fulfilling prophecies as the audiences pick up instruments and illegally downloaded software, and start contributing content too. Established artists and labels themselves may reorient their activities towards growth markets.

These ‘fashions’ (we don’t use the term pejoratively) do however degrade quickly due to content overload, a feeling of ennui and a growing thirst for something else, eventually the focus of attention moves on to the new thing. Smart outlets will have been careful not to associate themselves too closely with any current trend, least they take a reputational hit when the paradigm shifts. The creative capital invested by many a promising act or label is more or less wiped out.

This evolutionary system generates never-ending novelty at a breakneck pace. Does it however explore in sufficient depth any of the branches that are opened and foreclosed? Are the participants able (or willing) to break away from the influences they rediscover, and break new ground? How much future shock can audiences take before they give up on the new? How many records published between 2002 and 2008 do you listen to today? Why are so many revival acts from before things went this way headlining festivals, while the cool new acts play at 8PM?

None of these questions keep us awake at night. We do nevertheless wonder, and continue doing our thing.

Ashra’s ‘Midnight on Mars’ takes us away from the maelstrom of post-modernity, and back to a pastoral arcadia of delighted minutiae and pure chilling. It begins in the same place and year as Television’s Marquee Moon, but instead of gazing at (and punching for) the stars that peek through the nocturnal cityscape, it swims with their reflection in a wild pond very far away, in an eternal ecstasy of refraction and echo.

Ashra – Midnight on Mars

As included in 1977’s Blackouts.

Komodo’s Up and Down is a dark disco vector aimed at the promised land of the never-ending dance. A mystery prophet/cheerleader/minotaur wearing a silk robe and a golden mask leads this hedonistic rehash of the medieval ‘Children’s Crusade’, across half-forgotten labyrinths of lush Cerronian boogie, obsessive jazz convolutions, post-punk metronomica and reverb overdose. We never arrive where we hope to get, because we have been there all the time.

Komodo – Up and Down

This is the b-side in his Music Akamady release, out in Space.Rec.

Epilogue -
This post is tagged with Space.Rec.