The Friday Informer: They Hate Us, They Love Us, Now Pay

Photo of the Week Talk about muzzling the chattering classes! Out and about on tour, Sounds Like Now sends in evidence that some communities corral their critics more severely than we ever imagined was possible.

So, as luck would have it, the very day the AMC publicly announces our new Internet radio project, the Copyright Royalty Board decides to hike up the rates paid by webcasters. No proclamations of doom just yet—the noisy response that greeted this CBR announcement leaves us hopeful that a compromise will be worked out. After all, until Clear Channel and that cute family of piano-playing Brown children start playing Julius Eastman, this music needs other outlets. And we’re getting a little tired of being snubbed by the mainstream ones.

There’s actually a scary amount of digital content out there looking for someone to pay attention to it—161bn gigabytes at last count. Not all of this activity is really fit for wide-scale public consumption—just ask a violist, or an oboist for that matter—but don’t assume the audience is too buried in the past to be interested in newly produced work. Seriously irked ticket holders and street-side protests may result.

Now, we’re not pretending there’s not some really fascinatingly bizarre music out there these days, but maybe we’ve been grossly exaggerating just how crazily revolutionary it all is when compared to the work of previous generations.

Admittedly, it does make it rather difficult to stick a name to it, though.