Our good friend @shugarboy has produced a remix of We Are! Listen to a preview of it here. As an incentive to voting for us in Fox Seeds, when you sign up and like us on the Supernova site http://cfox.supernova.com/staticinthestars we will send you a link for a free download after voting is done!
And in Static land, new show announcement! May 5th at Joes Apartment with Handsome Distraction. Pre-sale tix are now available, save you two bucks at the door. Contact me for details (Taken with instagram)
Review of our Cellar show from Hammer Records! http://hammerrecords.blogspot.ca/2012/03/back-in-scene.html
Happy #ValentinesDay! Here’s a free romantic ballad (kind of) from Static in the Stars, just because we love you! Whenever You Fall
Jan 30th we are playing the Biltmore Cabaret with our good friends CRYSTAL KID from Calgary! #SUPPORT
Static in the Stars has been added to ROCK 101 RADIO! Listen live and request it here! http://rock101radio.com/
We all know the real reason people are angry about SOPA/PIPA is the threat that it makes towards their supply of internet porn.
But in order to misdirect from that fact and at the risk of being completely misunderstood, while attempting to straddle a lot of fences, here is my take on SOPA and the piracy issue as it pertains to music. (Hello run on sentence) I’m writing this quickly, so it’s probably going to be less eloquent than I would like, but deal with it. (As a disclaimer these are my views only, and don’t necessarily reflect the views of anyone else)
Some preliminary points:
- I oppose the bill SOPA/PIPA in every way, shape and form.
- Government censorship is bad.
- I love the internet.
- I steal music occasionally, probably not as much as most but it happens. I try and buy most of my music in order to support the artists because that’s what I would like people to do for me.
- I believe in the concept of offering music for free and as such you can download any of our songs for free all over the net. (Shameless plug: www.staticinthestars.com).
- That being said, I made the choice to offer this music for free.
- I would prefer that people pay for my music.
- There is a large cost associated with producing and recording music at a high quality that will never be recouped
- Recorded music puts food on the table and pays the mortgage for engineers, producers, studios, and other music industry professionals who deserve to be compensated for their expertise.
- If bands cannot sell their music and make money, they cannot afford to make more music. (I am totally oversimplifying this, yes there are different revenue streams like live, merch, licensing, etc. But it begins with having a good product to promote, hence a good recording).
- I think the music industry is broken and needs to be fixed, but trying to lobby to regulate the internet is not the way to do it.
- It’s going to suck for everyone when no one can afford to make music anymore.
The reality of it is, the concept and idea of people freely sharing music with each other is a great ideal and I love that people are willing to invest their time to spread the word about music. The concept of giving music away for free to promote your fan base and eliminate the barrier to entry for your band is also a great ideal. Unfortunately there are some real world issues. Independent bands are told to give their music away for free to gain additional exposure and that’s valid. But when do they start to see a return on the money that they put into the recording? At what point does it become cost ineffective to make music? Obviously I recognize that being paid for your music is a privilege that you receive after years of practice and honing your craft until you’ve created something worthy of payment. But there are a lot of great bands that I talk to that are gaining fans and trying to further a career but are being bitch slapped by the economics of it.
It’s easy to sit at home and proclaim that music should be free and the internet should be free and blah blah blah, but if someone came into your 7-11 and stole a slurpee you’d be pretty pissed. Think of all the artists that are spending money in order to give you a product for free and put yourself into their shoes. Think about the time, effort, money and energy that you would have to put into writing the songs, raising enough money to record, recording them, and then Twittering, blogging, Facebooking and shameless self promoting to everyone within hearing distance to let them know that you have in fact, released a song or an album. Maybe that’ll give you a two second pause before you hit download torrent. Nah it won’t. That 99 cents is obviously better served being put towards a $5 organic latte at some faux hipster joint where you can get together with your friends and talk about sticking it to the man while playing Skyrim on your new Mac. I mean, who would want to pay 99 cents for a song that could CHANGE YOUR LIFE.
So in a round about way my conclusion is this.
People, if you like the band support them please. Pay a little for their music. Buy a T-shirt. Buy them a beer. Bands, giving music away is a good idea to grow your fanbase, but know what you’re worth. Government, don’t shut down the internet, I need my porn.
Sincerely,
Jordan
Static in the Stars
Please excuse any and all grammatical errors, this is unedited and quick.
