Among some friends, and out in the world, there has been some chatter about the death of the music industry (or at least of major labels).

Let’s settle this one right now, no? we all know about:
radiohead
NIN

N-RON’s attitude is a common one at this point:

digital download for free, shows and special CDs for money

don’t confuse this with hatred of labels, it is simply time for the model to shift gears.

best description of the future of music I know is from the master of noise himself, Jacques Attali, in an interview from 2003

“But live, not as a replay. People will ask, more than anything, to see and to share live, rather than dead, events crystallised in records or virtually crystallised in a digital MP3 file.”

As the holiday explodes all numbers of downloads, we might ask, “what is next?”

“what is the new attention economy going to offer us?”

Will the archive we have each made, the gigabytes and terabytes of digital detritus that we accumulate, will it ever satiate our desire to own and control, to be owned and controlled? Or will the most cherished gift of all be the live experience, the opportunity to experience others, noise and sound, together.

Maybe it is these markers, these posts, music and noisy performances acting like temporary autonomous zones in a blur of consumption, that live on as our memories of hope for radical change.

Make music to make shows to make noisy things happen in real and memory-time. The end of the monoliths is a long way off. However, the spaces for noises are expanding.

Gil Scott Herron knew that the revolution will not be televised (as the comments say, it will be youtubed). And Rakim knew that you have to follow the leader.

There will be noisy leaders in 2008…