“Others, like the label Records on Ribs, have developed a model of supporting artists and raising their profile (because, isn’t that sort of what a record label should be passionate about?) that allows anyone to download new music for free, and then offers them the chance to donate what they think is appropriate for it. Their manifesto is refreshingly open:

• • To sell music for profit is to deny its worth. It is to reduce it to numbers, spreadsheets, targets. Desire cannot be quantified thusly.

• • Tapes, CD-Rs and the Internet give us the opportunity to distribute music for free without losing significant sums of money.

• • Anyone could do what we are doing. A free-for-all. Brilliance obscured by an avalanche of mundanity. There is an avalanche of mundanity already in the shops, and it costs you £9.99 a go. We only ask that you listen with open hearts and minds. And if one hundred, one thousand, one million people want to do the same as us then good luck to them. What a world that would be! A torrent of creativity freed from profit.

• • We accept donations, but do not expect them. What we do costs us little, but we cannot avoid making a loss. Nor can the artists who have to buy equipment and take time to rehearse, perform and record. Any money you give us will go to loosen these burdens and will be gratefully received.

What a world away from Mick Jagger this is. This is real music, and real artistry, where people are not doing things for the money, but for the passion of creating. Jagger sees his music as a product, for which he deserves money in exchange for its use in the market. At Records for Ribs – and other similar labels – music is still held in the realm of gift, beyond the banality of market exchange value.”

I’m currently reading Kester Brewin’s wonderful self-published book Mutiny! Why We Love Pirates and How They Can Save Us; the above passage is an excerpt from it. I’m about a third of the way through the book and I am thoroughly enjoying it. Brewin’s main crux, that pirate activity arises when commons are enclosed upon by private interests seeking financial gain is, in my opinion, spot on. His historical analysis is fantastic and his economic critique is authentic, astute and poignant.

I chose to quote the above section because it touches on a current hot button issue: internet/music piracy. Previously in the book, Brewin had discussed how the fledgling American nation had emerged as a nation of pirates, ignoring British book copyright laws and making knowledge freely available to even the most common farmer. In fact, as Brewin cites, the founding father Benjamin Franklin was a heavy advocate for the idea of producing things for the common good. He literally gave his inventions away. Brewin points out that Franklin understood that no creative person existed in a vacuum. We are all influenced by and build upon what has come before. Brewin writes:

It is this attitude, the breaking down of enclosures that other nations had put up, the ability to synthesize and build on what others had done, that made America great in the first instance.

Skipping ahead to the subject of music, Brewin rightly points out that it was only for a brief time in the 20th century that technology became available to make copyrighting music even possible. Before that, music was always considered common property, free to be played, sung and enjoyed by anyone, no credit card necessary. Brewin uses the example of the Rolling Stone’s Mick Jagger and the band Led Zepplin to show how copyright law is being twisted and abused to preserve “bloated rock-n-roll lifestyles” driven by profit. The ironic part about bands like the Stones and Zepplin arguing for copyright extension, claiming sole creative credit over their songs, is that as much as they would like you to believe, they too do not exist in a vacuum. Brewin elaborates:

…any cursory listening of Jagger’s compositions will tell you that he is far more ‘the commoner who seeks and absorbs the wisdom of many masters.’ In other words, he wrote blues standards, using chord progressions and changes that were part of the great commons of blues music, and which no one could dare to ‘own.’

This brings me to my main take away, which Brewin gets to in the opening passage. Real art is not done for money, it’s done for the sole passion of creating and sharing it freely for the good of the common. As the Records on Ribs label disclosure succinctly (and rightly) states, ‘to sell [art] for profit is to deny its worth.’

Tags:artcapitalismcommodityKester Brewinpiratesprofitvalue