A friend once told me “nobody should ever write for public consumption when you are tired, drunk, stoned or angry”. 

At midnight on Friday I posted this (below) on the NY Times Freakonomics blog by Stephen Dubner; he recently posted WHAT’S THE FUTURE OF THE MUSIC INDUSTRY?  A FREAKONOMICS QUORUM. 

I sincerely apologize to my friends at labels – I was tired.  I meant to imply that technology no longer requires you to go down in the trenches and get dirty, and not that your work is slimy.

MY NEW YORK TIMES POST FROM FRIDAY NIGHT - TYPOS EXCLUDED

MUSIC AND DIRT SIFTING
I always try to write articles on Unsprung Artists that help artists and labels.  Usually I focus on marketing and leveraging the power of the Internet.  However, for this post I want to talk about dirt sifting.  Have you ever seen a large-scale dirt processing plant? Sifters, conveyors, shakers, trucks, hoppers and dust overwhelm the landscape.

 

Prior to modern dirt processing, man had to sort his dirt by hand.  Imagine sifting tons and tons of dirt, sticks and stones into separate piles organized by size and weight.  The process was hard and messy and it took forever.  

Music is like dirt.  There’s tons of it, and the process of sifting through it was hard and it took forever.  Then came digital music technology – ah the modern dirt processing plant for music.   It neatly allowed us to sort out the sticks and stones, and pile them into little neat folders by mood, genre, tempo, artist, or into any pile we could imagine.

You know the mechanized dirt processing plant put the human dirt sorters out of business; but the dirt sorters didn’t quit, they learned how to drive tractors and trucks and how to run the sifters and sorters.

Then the dirt sorters grew the dirt market, and it grew and grew and grew, and now you can get every type of dirt, stone and wood chip imaginable; blue rocks mixed with white rocks, yellow wood chips, pink sand; if you can imagine it, you can probably buy it.

The dirt sorters were smart; they learned how to run the machines that made the neat little piles, and how to rapidly move the piles to the people that longed for different types of dirt, stone and chips.  And, they made a lot of money.  And they didn’t have to get dirty any more.

So, if you are an artist you should know that if you can find the exact pile to put your stones into, someone will eventually buy that pile.  And, if you are a record label, go down to the dirt farm, watch the dirt processor, ask questions, learn from the dirt farmer, and you will see – he is clean and he prospers.