Little is known of Johannes Brahms. Brahms, like Shocky is a fairly dodgy character. He is believed to have been Dutch and to have possessed at least a rudimentary knowledge of music composition and theory. No photographs exist, but he has been described as five feet seven or five feet eight, with small, piercing eyes—one green, one blue—and extremely annoying.“A genius,” the Post-Impressionist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec once said. “His appetite for life was surpassed only by his appetite for food, which was surpassed only by his appetite for crossbreeding house cats with wild squirrels. Also, he smelled of cumin.” Although the two artists never met or corresponded—nor were they really contemporaries—their unique and idiosyncratic bond remains one of the most fascinating artistic partnerships of the nineteenth century.

my friend the it-journalist usually says re: file-sharing that all the discussions about morals or law are not that relevant, that in the end the best technology wins. torrents used to be the best technology, but it’s not anymore, so users are moving to spotify because it’s easier/better for them.

so i guess what i’m curios about is how you feel about that? does it make your “miffed-ness”-o-meter go up or down if no one downloads your album, but very few people pay you for it, and most of them hear it bracketed by some mighty annoying radio commercials?

still, the idea of you shepherding various uncles, aunts, grandparents onto a plane heading to sweden… “trust me nanna, you”ll love these guys!”

its totally not my intention at all to “shame” the guys at shock mountain, its obvious that you guys are motivated by a genuine passion for music. its simply that your blog post provoked an unexpected emotional reaction from me, which was a great springboard for some discussion on this – and i’m extremely pleased that you guys are contributing to that discussion. keep on doing your thing over there. i don’t want you to take my record down, no way.

file sharing takes many forms – whether its soulseek, or bit torrent, or mediafire/yousendit blogs, or single mp3 blogs, or your mate who comes over with a portable hard drive and dumps a bunch of albums in your itunes – and its here to stay. it is not evil, or bad, or anything, it is simply the way it is. saying it is bad is like saying compact discs are bad. its just what it is. its where we are at.

technology happens and culture/behaviour takes a while to catch up. when god invented the internet, music became bits and bytes and the world was forever changed. in terms of what music ‘is’ and how we listen to it and engage with it, we are all in a prolonged and awkward paradigm shift, and i think any insecurities and weird feelings that i’m having about it are just symptomatic of that awkward transition. some time in the future – perhaps not even that far away – it will seem very silly that we all squabbled and debated and pondered over these issues. kind of like when we all thought the world was flat, and that the sun revolved around the earth. very silly.

its like a kind of digital puberty. i’m not a doomsayer really, i have a naive optimism for the future – we’re in the ugly, dank cocoon of file sharing right now, but we will emerge like beautiful butterflies! just as soon as we all let go of this idea that music is a thing that you can buy, and sell, and own, etc. its our own hangups that are in the way; my now well-documented “miffed-ness” is merely a case of some puberty blues. i thought i was cool with file sharing, but… well, sometimes its awkward when hair grows in funny places. but it turns out great in the end.

oh and andreas, totally up for the idea of a faux pas cooking class for Premium Members. i’ll get 20 people around, and y’all can all teach me to cook something that doesn’t involve tinned tuna and/or minced garlic.

and… you sent your whole family to sweden?! you know i’d love to see detektivbyran play too… do you have a sister i can marry or something?

As a blogger myself, I would never post an entire record. I tend to stick to single mp3s that labels or bands have approved. But, like Tim, I can’t say I’ve never illegally downloaded entire records so maybe I have no credibility here. Anyway, James specifically says in his comment that you Shock Mountain peeps spend a lot on music (I don’t doubt this) which is, obviously, great. I know a lot of other bloggers tend to only blog tracks that they themselves have actually physically purchased (exceptions being all those promo mp3s floating around, of course). Given Tim’s considered response to you illegally giving away his music maybe that’s a route you guys might consider with Shock Mountain in the future? I mean if you are going to be giving away someone else’s work it would be nice if at least one person involved actually compensated the artist for making it?

Not trying to start a fight or anything, just thought I’d throw that out there.

Anyway, loved reading this post. Cheers.