Artist-liberating Technology
A couple of days ago I went to see one of my favorite bands, The California Guitar Trio (CGT). CGT is a unique band, 3 ex-disciples of Robert Fripp, using custom-made acoustic guitars tuned using the famed Fripp tuning. CGT plays a wide variety of songs, from original pieces that use a multi-layered approach to melody and rhythm, to covers of Beethoven’s 5th, Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody to a wonderful rendition of Pink Floyd’s Echoes. It’s nearly impossible to describe their music and definitely beyond the skills of this humble blogger. But that’s not what I wanted to talked about in this post. I witnessed the wave of change in the music industry during that CGT concert. During the break I approached the table where the band was selling their CDs and merchandise and I was offered to buy that night’s concert on CD. That’s right, the concert that I was actually listening to. The band sells the CD sleeve. 10 minutes after the concert is finished they “dump” the digital stream that they recorded from the sound board and use a multi-disc replication tower to create 10 CDs at the time. In a matter of minutes, while we were talking with the band members, my CD was ready. I love this! Here I am holding a one-of-a-kind recording and the money that I paid for it goes 100% to the band, to the artists who actually make the music that I enjoyed. It’s a wonderful business model that is showing how off-the-shelf technology is liberating the artists and giving them the opportunity to self-publish and being free of the schemes created by the recording labels that most of the times give the artist a pittance from the exorbitant cost of a CD. And while CGT is not in conflict with their label, Discipline Global Mobile, another of Robert Fripp offsprings, this model is a wonderful occasion for artists worldwide to profit from their work and give something unique to their fans.
