Song, by Toad

After my difficulties with the Web Sherriff last week a few people left some angry posts about them being bastards and so on, and I kind of got stuck in myself, accusing them of living in the 20th Century, which is fair enough I think.

However, I think it’s time someone actually stood up for Web Sheriff.  Wipe the coffee off your monitor, yes, I am serious.  Now, I am not stepping back from accusations that they are foolish dinosaurs desperately clinging onto an outmoded way of doing things and actually are entirely failing to protect the bands they represent.

But in their favour, unlike the RIAA before them, who genuinely are a malevolent bunch of dishonest, vicious whores, they actually don’t do anything all that bad apart from get in touch and ask you to take songs down.  Now this is frustrating as hell, and it winds me up because I take this blog quite personally, and having one of their notices on your site is a bit like finding an uninvited guest in your living room and makes you react angrily.  But I have received similar emails from managers of small bands like The Dodos and The 1900s and complied immediately as well.  Now, these emails were better worded and didn’t carry a thinly disguised legal threat, which helped, but the upshoot is the same: please take that song down as we don’t want you giving it away for free.

I even, ludicrously, got one from a group no-one has heard of, asking me to take their song down.  Manchester’s Modernaires are a terrific group who I’d love to feature more of, but the last time I did I was contacted (by their manager I think – I don’t really remember) informing me that they had signed some sort of release deal with a label or someone and that this deal included internet exclusivity.  Now for a group that small to effectively forbid internet word of mouth advertising is, in my opinion, completely and utterly insane.  Stupid, blinkered, self-defeating, and so utterly indicative of someone, somewhere completely failing to understand how the internet works, that it made me laugh and cry at the same time.  But I took the songs down – of course I did, why wouldn’t I?

Now the Modernaires scenario arises, I would guess, from the label they are dealing with desperately trying to scrabble for more pageviews.  There is an attitude at the moment that pageviews constitute clout, and to a degree I would agree with this, and that for all I don’t have much capital here at Song, by Toad, the perception is that I in some way ‘own’ a particular audience.  I have my doubts about this, but I am guessing that this bunch simply want to drive traffic their way, and have decided on a stupid way of going about it.

But if you think they’re being totally unreasonable, consider this: as a blogger plugging, say, someone’s new 7″ single would you agree with me if I decided not to make the single itself available for download as part of the review?  I wouldn’t do it myself, because I would want to encourage people to go and buy the thing.  In the days when most people no longer have record players this may not be a particularly worthwhile stance, but I would feel wrong making it available.  So I am not entirely disagreeing with the substance of the Modernaires’ management, just the way they actually put similar instincts to my own into practise.

In the case of the REMs and Ranconteurs of this world, the statement is more directly dismissive: we do not want or need your publicity, your discussion or your interest.  Fair enough.  Maybe it’s more nuanced than that: as much as we appreciate your publicity, discussion and interest, it comes with the inherent (debatable, but not spurious) drawback of making almost our entire record available for nothing on the internet, and we want people to buy the records instead.  In the case of the Dodos, 1900s, and the New Pornographers, when they have contacted me (the latter via Web Sheriff) they have all said ‘we would prefer it if just these particular songs were made available as preview songs’, which I actually think is completely reasonable.

In the case of REM and the Raconteurs, there was no such thing, although there were other preview options available via Facebook streams and so on, but if I am being inflexible in terms of how I post music – no streams or other shit like that – it is a bit hypocritical to pull a face that they are being equally inflexible in how they publicise their music.

And lets not be disingenuous here, there is a perfectly reasonable argument of exploitation to be made.  When I post songs by The Raconteurs, Radiohead, REM, whatever, my hits do increase.  As the pageviews are the only currency in which I can really trade, this means that it can be argued that I am using their big name to increase the value of my own enterprise whilst offering very little in return.  As I said at the time, they don’t need my review in particular, and neither do you.  There are millions out there.

They have no obligation to value what we are doing here, and I am not stupid enough to think that what we do is in any way a benefit for groups of that size.  They are well beyond needing the approval or even acknowledgement of anyone at this level.  Even small groups have no obligation to want to be on these pages – that’s just arrogant.  I am writing about music because I like it, for my benefit, not entirely for theirs so why should they feel any obligation to participate?

As I said, the malevolent tone and fairly explicit threat of Web Sheriff requests in the middle of a small time, personal website are jarring and a little scary.  They are making it quite clear that they could sue if they wanted to, and as a result we react with understandable hostility.  But they aren’t making requests that other, smaller enterprises do not and what they are requesting may be considered misguided, but it is not entirely unreasonable.

Effectively a great many sites like this and audiences like us are using blogs and small sites as away of actively turning our backs on the (capitals!) Music Industry Behemoth.  Groups like REM and The Raconteurs are part of that behemoth, almost by default by virtue of their size and popularity.  So if we are turning our backs on their world then it is a little bit churlish to take exception when they in turn do not feel obliged to grovellingly accept what crumbs of approval we actually do disdain to toss in their direction.

As to the songs, well I’m not sure how these are at all relevant, but they have been knocking around my inbox for a bit and I thought it was time someone heard them.

Teitur – Catherine the Waitress
Tobias Froberg – Blissfull
Tafra – I’m Sorry Brakne-Hoby