the REPORT Issue 331 | 13 November 2013 You have done a deal with BitTorrent. Also in this issue: What did it involve? I wouldn’t call it a deal, per se. I gave them all the PAGE 5: stems from my most recent album, Innocents. Twitter’s IPO... I made them available to anyone who wants to and beyond » download them and do their own mixes and remixes. I met with the guys from BitTorrent PAGE 6: last spring and [saw that] a lot of musicians use Pinboard: BitTorrent as a way of disseminating pre-existing Stats, deals, things like videos, singles or b-sides. I thought it startups and more » would be interesting to put something out there where anyone who downloaded it would be able PAGE 7: to do their own remixes and change the songs as Country profile: much as they wanted to. Ireland » What’s the reaction been? PAGE 8: The response has been great. The quality of Features: Moby click: remixing software – whether it is Ableton, Reason Aggregators evolve » or Logic – is pretty remarkable. In 1995, we had a remix contest for an album I put out. Some of talkingtalking digitaldigital withwith MobyMoby the remixes were good but at that point doing a remix was a lot more complicated. Whereas now With a number of artists busily squaring up to both Spotify and anyone with a laptop can do really good remixes. The quality is great. the labels about their streaming payments, Moby argues they Many parts of the industry regard are focusing too heavily on the short-term issues and becoming BitTorrent as synonymous with piracy. beholden to the idea of digital services as immovable monoliths. Were you concerned about working with them? Here he talks about using BitTorrent as a distribution partner, On the one hand, and maybe this is not an why railing against piracy is like yelling at the weather, why elegant thing to say, the fact there is a degree technology’s state of flux is a good thing and why algorithms can’t of controversy surrounding BitTorrent is one of the things that actually made me a lot more replace the arbitrary and surprise nature of human-led discovery. interested in it. When I met with them and they COVER STORY the REPORT | 13 November 2013 | Page 2 continued… explained to me what their platform is, it just think too much about trying to monetise and seemed in line with the ethos I have with regards miss the bigger picture, which is that platforms to the distribution of diff erent types of digital come and go – whether it’s Spotify or Pandora media. My feeling about piracy and the way or the original Napster or some digital platform in which music exists online is probably a lot that might be invented tomorrow. Bandwidth diff erent to the way most major labels think increases and diff erent types of piracy emerge. about it. All that is in a state of flux; but one thing that is not in a state of flux is that if a musician makes a So what is your stance on piracy? beautiful piece of music, someone will want to It is a tricky thing to talk about as I have to parse listen to it. my words. If I were to be completely honest I’d Over time an audience will develop who might probably end up alienating more people than look at the eff ectiveness of their approach. What have stolen the first couple of songs or first I already have alienated. On a very basic level, the major labels hopefully learned a while ago is couple of albums, but they might be willing to, I make music because I love making music. that punishing listeners is not the way to go. down the road, buy merchandise, buy access to One of the things that is really exciting about Spotify argued that the way to kill piracy live concerts or go to live concerts. I feel like the being a musician is taking the music that you was to make a legal service that was better music business hasn’t benefitted from taking a made and putting it out to the world and seeing – but its payments have come under fi re fairly shortsighted view to piracy in the here and what happens with it. It’s really a remarkable art recently. Where do you stand on this? now compared to a much happier and rosier form in that it’s one of the few forms of creative long-term picture. I understand that a lot of expression that people can experience while is like having an opinion about the weather. There are hundreds of millions of pieces of these companies are beholden to shareholders they are doing something else. You can’t really You can have super-strong opinions but the music floating around in the world online. and quarterly results – but I feel there has to be look at paintings when you are driving to work. weather isn’t paying attention. When people For any person to make the eff ort to listen to a better and more eff ective way to see things get all worked up about piracy, I just don’t see something that I have done is so flattering. It’s I have absolutely no idea how they [fans] will in the broader long term rather than in the that it’s all that eff ective. For the past 15 years such a compliment. So I can’t really be worked listen to my music or where they listen to it. Or if narrower short term. or so, the major labels have been incredibly up about how they are listening to it. For me the they are going to listen to it in its existing form or bent out of shape about piracy and they focus is on the music itself and the relationship David Byrne and Thom Yorke feel the if they are going to remix it. Or if they will listen haven’t accomplished anything. For the most that the listener might have to the music. money Spotify pays is not enough and to 10 seconds of the song or to an entire album. I interesting music companies and musicians refer to that as democratic chaos. Or egalitarian If every musician, label and manager really that new artists are getting a rough deal. it seems like their focus is making music that anarchy. I love that aspect of it. It seems that it focused on making the best possible music that they really love and then they put it out to the What I hope is that, if for some reason, it has, for quite a while now, been completely out they could and doing whatever they could to world and see what happens. dissuades artists from making music when of anyone’s control. really focus on and enhance the relationship the only reason they want to make music is to A major label’s criteria for evaluating things are with the listener, the rest would probably take get paid for it instead of wanting to be heard Regardless of our feelings about the way certainly a lot diff erent from mine. I don’t want to care of itself. That might be a very Pollyanna- – then by all means that is a good thing. I am digital music exists in the world, I almost feel criticise or judge too harshly their perspective, ish and naïve perspective, but I think too many all in favour of mercenary artists going on and that having an opinion about digital music but at some point there has to be an empirical companies almost go under because they starting app companies or become marketing COVER STORY the REPORT | 13 November 2013 | Page 3 continued… directors for muffler companies. being played on the same speakers. If it’s coming off the radio, they get very excited; but if it’s My approach is exactly the opposite. I believe coming off Spotify they get all worked up. From artists deserve the right to make money from my perspective it’s the same song being listened what they do but I think the clever musician in to by the same people on the same speakers. 2013 can find lots of ways to make a living. They How can you malign one delivery vehicle and can write music for movies or video games, applaud another delivery vehicle? they can do remixes, they can DJ, they can write songs for other people, they can develop apps. What is your advice to new acts who don’t There are so many interesting and challenging have the luxury of being signed and built ways for a musician to make a good living in up by a label in the pre-digital age? 2013 that to just focus on this [streaming] seems For kids who are starting out as musicians, it’s very odd and short sighted. so exciting as they don’t have to wait around for The other thing I find really funny – and sort a major label to notice them. They don’t have to of sadly ironic – is that, at the end of the day, wait around for any big media institutions to pay you have music coming out of speakers but so attention to them. They don’t have to wait for many people are getting worked up about the NME, Spin or Rolling Stone to notice them. They delivery mechanism that brings the music to don’t have to wait for MTV to notice them.