I found the following on Digital Spy & thought it reflected a lot of what Steve is saying about the changing shape of the music industry
David Lynch has suggested that the digital revolution will bring more freedom to the film and music industries.
The iconic director was speaking to The Guardian about his involvement in the controversial Dark Night Of The Soul project with Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse.
Lynch said: “Sometimes the house burns down and you build a new one. Because the world is so, so, completely backwards and absurd, people think it’s strange or an exception to have freedom to create something.
“It’s ridiculous. The exception should be that sometimes people do not have freedom. What went wrong?”
Danger Mouse said of the project: “The whole idea was to bring little bit more imagination back into music. I’ve missed a lot of that and when I was younger it seemed easier to do than it is now.”
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/music/a160036/lynch-slams-music-film-industries.html
finally round to reading up on this a little – seems like Lynch is well aware of how low-cost advertising can be if you think about it, and how much of the cost of doing it old-school went on promotion. They are putting together an interesting project, packaging it as a limited edition (harder to download something that’s as tactile as the Dark Night project sounds like it will be) and then, presumably, make the music available separately, make films of it… generally have a bit of a lark making innovative media stuff.
Anyone know any more about it?
I have it but haven’t had chance to indulge yet. I like the concept, free music to sell other art. Thought about writing a book a few years ago that detailed the fictional story behind an album recording and giving the album away free with the book so very interested in how this pans out. I’ll try and post a link to the audio in the morning so we can pull it apart in true muso fashion!
All I know is that they have decided to release the project (or at least part of it) as a blank CD-R with a booklet of David Lynch photography. The CD-R is to get around the dispute with EMI. Danger Mouse is basically encouraging fans to share the music on P2P networks so they can then burn it to their CD-R.
This is a good article on how the blank CD-R trick may actually make it legal.
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/05/danger-mouse-inducem