Robert Smith gave music journalism an easy start to the week with a blog post in reply to his interview last week calling Radiohead “idiots” for the In Rainbows pay-what-you-want release.  Frustrated with what he considered reductionist coverage of his argument, The Cure frontman reasserted his base thesis (and forgot to turn his caps lock off).

AN ARTIST HAS TO VALUE THE ART THEY CREATE

OTHERWISE I DONT BELIEVE THEY CAN BELIEVE IT TO BE ART

Though it remains unclear why Robert Smith is so affected by Radiohead’s foray into digital distribution, from both his interview and post it is clear he considers it a fundamental threat.  Multiple times he likens the model to “free art,” even going so far to self-deprecatingly using industry marketing speak to describe his perception of Radiohead’s motivation:

ANY FAMOUS ARTIST WITH A HUGE AND DEVOTED FAN BASE(OFTEN ARRIVED AT WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM A WEALTHY AND POWERFUL ‘PATRON’ ORTWO?) CAN AFFORD TO DO WHAT HE, SHE OR IT WANTS…

INCLUDING GIVING THEIR ART AWAY AS SOME KIND OF ‘LOSSLEADER’ TO HELP ‘BUILD THE BRAND’

Both Smith’s perception of In Rainbows distribution and his argument for its collateral damage to artists is transparently oblivious to the current business of music.  His fundamental misconception on artistic value, market dynamics, Radiohead’s place in the greater industry, and yes a fair bit of greed and nostalgia is driving this argument – one that will ultimately serve as the fading chorus on the radio single Big Music.

Photo: BossLynn

The most obvious issue is the disconnect between art and a product.  The long history of aesthetic philosophy would suggest real art can never be a product.  Arthur Schopenhauer – to whom music was considered the most pure of arts – would argue by extension of his aesthetics that recordings bring the art of music to the inferior level of other media.  Paintings, sculptures, architecture and all the other physical representations we see, Schopenhauer would argue, are inferior reproductions of the creator’s real artistry.  So too would he consider recordings an inferior copy of music, particularly in the currently stagnant condition of music production.  In that context, it’s hard to see how Robert Smith can call a CD art.  The art is the music-in-itself, which can then be productized into a commodity that can be purchased. Albums are products that even with the finest engineering is inferior fundamentally to the works of art they attempt to reproduce.

Pricing a product and valuing art is a distinction every working artist intuitively makes.  I pay the same price at the box office for The Wrestler as Madea Goes To Jail.  Neither Darren Aronofsky nor Tyler Perry would likely dispute which is the more valuable of the two, though we as consumers can decide which product we choose to purchase.  One’s art and one’s not, yet both compete fairly in a relatively free market. The conclusion one can draw from the a priori argument and empircal evidence is, despite what Robert Smith thinks, real art’s value doesn’t correspond to a pricepoint. The roof of the Sistine Chapel didn’t come with a Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price sticker.

In addition to Smith’s inflated elevation of the record, directly correlating it to the value the artist places in the record is misguided.  He calls it a “loss leader” to “build a brand,” asserting that In Rainbows was a publicity stunt intended to introduce Radiohead to a new generation of fans.  What he’s failing to even acknowledge in his increasingly erratic argument is that Radiohead made a shitload of money off In Rainbows. Even before its eventual retail release as a plastic disc on Best Buy shelves, it made more for the band than Hail to the Thief ever did.  That was just in the opening months of the release – Radiohead, not the record label, participates in a much larger share of the record’s residual exploitation.  Not only did In Rainbows make more money up front, but it will make exponentially more money than if they had followed The Cure’s antiquated model of big label releases.

Ultimately, Radiohead is doing the best thing for Radiohead.  Pay-what-you-want won’t work for the Jonas Brothers, won’t work for smaller independent artists and probably won’t work for The Cure.  But both as artist and as businessman, Robert Smith should be at worst ambivalent to the release of In Rainbows.  His criticism from both perspectives are hollow and coarse.  Radiohead clearly valued their art sufficiently to bear the brunt of its writing, recording, mixing, mastering, and digital distribution entirely on its own.  Just as clearly, a free market rewarded the risk of their business model with the biggest payday in the recent memory of their careers. If The Cure don’t think that model is valuable despite its success, then it’s just a business they shouldn’t be in.

Robert Smith is not the only person complaining about the Radiohead model who gets a paycheck from the business of music.  But out of that group’s tiny subset of those whose business is making music, he must feel pretty lonely.

The success of In Rainbows is only a threat to the unrepentantly corporate.

» You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.