Day 77. Everybody's somebody's fool. (18/3/19)

(Soundtrack: Well, that's where the title comes from, isn't it? I'm listening to a compilation/playlist on Apple Music. Gary Crowley's Lost 80s. I value Gary Crowley far more now than I did when he was seemingly ubiquitous across the music programming of the decade he's now covering.

And I don't know if this is the album box set that's he's just put out under this title or a playlist that someone else has pulled together to show what's on the CD set. It's good though.

The Pale Fountains' 'Something On My Mind', Haircut 100's 'Milk Film', The Bluebells' track that gives the title of today's thing - and if all you know of The Bluebells is 'I'm Falling' or 'Young At Heart', trust me, they were so much more than that - Aztec Camera, Dream Academy, Strawberry Switchblade, Hurrah.... and so many more.

There's one thing I know though. The artists that created the work aren't making a single bloody penny from me listening to their work this way. In fairness, if I bought any of the albums second hand [which is the way I'd now be most likely to find the albums these tracks came from nowadays] they wouldn't make any money from that either.

But.

That's not the point.

I follow lots of the people involved in these songs on twitter. I'm 'friends' with quite a few on Facebook. A handful of people whose music I love I know well enough in the real world to have a gab with if I run into them in town.

Me listening to their music here doesn't help them.

Buying direct helps. Paying to see them live helps. Listening on Apple or Spotify? Nothing. It might get attention but it doesn't put food on the table.

I know this because Ian McNabb, ex Icicle Works, has just posted details of Spotify's chiefs' reported salaries on Facebook. Because these details need to be known. Spotify's chief product officer, in the last tax year, reported a salary of $7.9Million. There are others following close behind. But if we drop right down to their HR manager - admittedly a 'global HR manager' - she only reported a salary of $789k.

I'm sure she's really good at her job. But she hasn't created anything.

Nobody at Spotify has created anything. Their livelihood exists on the efforts of others. They're nothing but a medium of transport. Same for Apple.

And you can say this has always been the way. There have always been loads of bands who didn't make the salary of the chief Exec of EMI, the controller of Radio One. There have always been DJs who were better known than the music they played. Radio One used to be filled with them. Might still be but they all seem so anonymous now.

But they were there to put the artists' product in front of people. The DJs were playing music when their programming dictated it, you had no control over when or where you listened to it. If you wanted to own it then you had to buy it. And the artist would make some money. [And yes, there's inequality there too, trust me, I know, book publishing works like record labels]. But they would make SOME money.

Streaming doesn't make musicians money. We live in a world where everybody believes all entertainment should be free. Where people seem to believe that the work itself has no value but the method of consuming it does. So we have subscriptions but we don't buy. 

And we expect art to continue to be made.

And when I say 'we', I mean me as much as anyone. I don't buy what I used to buy. No longer having the 30% discount saw to that one. I give Apple a tenner a month and I listen to all this stuff. And, other than a few artists whose work I buy direct, nobody benefits from my listening.

Just pointing out the problems. I don't have any solutions.

And this is all the 'soundtrack pre-amble'.)

Because there are days when I don't want to write. I've been writing stuff this morning. Stuff for here. Stuff you'll see in a month's time.

Which is me producing entertainment for nothing, I suppose. Is that my trade off with the universe?

If we're prepared to call any of this entertaining, that is.

But none of the writing I've done today is the writing I need to be doing.

Something's coming that's going to change the piece I'm working on. But in the meantime I've picked up on the Comeback Special TV/Film script and I've hit the bit in the middle of the play where you all go the bar and we jump eighteen months.

And who wants to do that in a film script? That's lazy. That's trying to move things forward too quickly to get to the end without putting in the work. Like the last season of Game Of Thrones where everybody was teleporting round to get to places quicker than in any of the previous seasons.

The thing you can do dramatically on stage to show time has passed looks like a cheat when you put it down in a film script. So I'm creating bits of life for the characters that I'd never considered before.

And it's so much easier to avoid by doing stuff like this.

(Strawberry Switchblade 'Trees and Flowers' - really good, never heard it before. I'm trading my guilt for enjoyment of a track I'd have never otherwise come across. Seeing how I feel with that one.)