On the record

Should artists get paid for music or should it be free ? JIM CARROLLon music

DO MUSIC FANS really care if an act gets paid for their art? That question comes to mind after a week spent observing the to-ing and fro-ing inspired by a pair of blog posts.

The conversation began with Emily White. She’s an intern at NPR’s All Songs Considered show and wrote about how she has purchased just a handful of CDs in her life. The bulk of the 11,000 tracks in her iTunes came from mix-CDs and her college radio station’s library.

While the piece started out as some musing on the move from physical formats to digital, White did include comments such as “I honestly don’t think my peers and I will ever pay for albums.”

Enter Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven frontman David Lowery. He wrote a lengthy retort to White on The TriChordist. As often happens, both posts went viral.

When you’re gauging the reaction to White and Lowery, an interesting divide quickly emerges. Those on the artistic and business side favour Lowery’s arguments about how music has a cost, while many music fans wonder what all the fuss is about.

For many of the latter, music has become a free, always-on commodity and the business should simply react and adopt to these changes. Certain lines are usually trotted out to back this up – one of them is “we buy tickets for the gigs and spend money at the merch stand” – but those at the coalface know that’s not enough to keep a band in business.

You’d hesitate to call it a generation gap as it crosses all ages, but there’s a growing divide between the side who won’t pay and the side who think they should. So which side are you on?

NEW MUSIC

RHYE

Los Angeles-based duo Rhye’s debut Open EP for Innovative Leisure is full of mesmerising, slow-motion, soulful hooks and perfectly pitched Sade pop.

Not much is known about the pair, but we hear there’s a debut album in the can so more tunes like Open can, we hope, be expected soon.

[ Soundcloud.com/rhyemusic ]

CHURCHES

Lies is the only track available to date from Glasgow outfit Churches, but it’s more than enough to get things going. It’s a pulsating, monstrous tune with plenty of dramatic peaks within its brooding cinematic hip-hop. We look forward to more from these Scottish indie stalwarts

Soundcloud.com/ churchestheband

WILD CUB

Smashing synth-pop with sharply idiosyncratic tunes (such as the sparkling Wild Light) from Nashville duo Keegan DeWitt and Jeremy Bullock.

The debut album, Youth, is due for release later in the summer and should be noted by fans of off-kilter melodic pop.

[ Wildcubmusic.com ]

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Forthcoming single from the New York rapper hunkered down in Berlin comes with art-pop oomph and filthy beats.

For more see irishtimes.com/blogs/ontherecord