Maybe it’s not right for a netlabel curator to write things like this, but I’m just trying to be honest.

The world of so called “netaudio” (here and after under “netaudio” I mean netlabels world with all artists and netlabels, and not commercial artists who sometimes give their works for free with promo purposes) is kinda silent. Even the most popular netlabel artists get less feedback. And while almost all popular services and blogs for netlabels have option to leave comments, there are always ’0 comments’ under each post, review or press-release.

Why? There are a few main reasons I guess:

1) Age. You hardly find teenagers among netaudio listeners. But teens are those who like to talk and talk and talk about music, artists, tracks and releases. Adults are less talkative and more tired. And they “just don’t have time”. Or wish. And they can’t find many like-minded listeners. They prefer to post a bit.ly link on Twitter. And get an RT like: “Thanks. Nice music”.

2) Material quality. While commercial labels usually guarantee their music meets at least minimal complianse requirements, in netlabels world quality is not that necessary. So people just don’t want to talk about “bad releases”.

3) Lack of everything that “near music”, lack of hype, that exists in commercial industry. No clips (all those self-made ‘clips’ usually go in ‘trash’ category), no big interviews, no media, no scandals, no photosessions, no ‘brands’, nothing ‘bohemian’ at all. I.e. lack of everything that supports listeners interest to the content and lack of something that people actually talk about when they talk about music. And this is very importnat, cause it’s a big mistake to think that content itself is a main thing here.

4) Genres. There is still domination of outsider genres like ambient, idm, glitch and drone music. There are several reasons for this but I’m too lazy to mention ‘em.

So what do we have at the end of the day? Nothing promising actually. Let’s take a 28 y.o. IT-worker, or web-designer, or illustrator or musician. He (or sometimes, I mean it – just sometimes – she) downloads another one release from another one netlabel. Artist’s name says nothing to him – just letters. What else? Well it’s a cover art with something abstract like fractals and geometric figures made using Photoshop. And here is the content: a few ambient, idm, glitchy tunes. Sound quality is ok, and there is even something like “idea” or “concept”, but nothing memorable enough. No vocal either. Our guy (or sometimes girl) can’t remeber it, sing it or whistle it. No video, no cool story behind. Just a myspace page of the artist.

Shift+Delete? Maybe not now, but later. And it will be Shift+Delete for the whole directory probably. And of course there is no wish to go to the site again and fill those forms in comments area.

I know there are a few netlabels who exist for years, so they have regular fans who give them regular feedback. But actually each music site and community who exists for a long time has the same.

So what’s the point? I’m talking about netudio perspective and artists motivation. There are enthusiasts who write articles about soon death of commercial indusrty, they are in copyleft/copyright dicussions. And they like slogans. Many, many slogans. But I’m afriad it’s all an illusion. In real world artists still try to get a record deal with majors or big indie-labels who can give ‘em a hype, video, media coverage and tours and yes – FEEDBACK.

And what about netlabels? There are thousnads of them already, and they have thousnads and thousnads of releases. But nothing is going on. It’s a slient world with boring statistics of site visitors and download numbers. No feedback. And very possbile shift+delete in future. The actual audithory of an average artist is his friends list on Facebook. So in my opinion, netaudio is not an alternative to commercial industry, it’s not even a good addition to it. In my opinion, netaudio is about comment on Facebook like: “Hey John. Nice music. Keep it up, buddy!”

Let’s face the truth. Most netlabels can’t give artist anything that he couldn’t get himself. And most artists just do the self-promotion without netlabels. At least they get a direct feedback, and download numbers are either the same or even higher then netlabels have.

So netlabels are for those artists who produce unpopular music and for those artists who are too lazy (0r too busy) to make a proper self-promotion. Or it’s just a “service club” and nothing more.

Why? Because no money in there.

Is there any chance to solve these problems?

P.S. Sorry for my English.

Alexander Chereshnev. Co-founder, curator, artist of Mixgalaxy Records

Reactions:

Vuzh Music Blog – “Response to Silent World of Netlabels”

Discussion on “Dogs on Acid” forum

Feedback most wanted… really?