deuxlits

last week, music snobs’ most beloved bittorrent site, oink, got the smackdown. [nymag just posted a whole bunch of stuff here, here, and here] and my heart sagged a little as a result. as a total music dork, oink had it all. really, everything that you could imagine, in the most obscure genres, the most random labels.  it was really amazing to dig through people’s collections and i always thought searching in oink was like digging through people’s dusty music bins. one guy likened oink to “tower records on steroids” which is a pretty funny and accurate description.

trent reznor spoke in the NYT about oink and had this to say:

“I’ll admit I had an account there and frequented it quite often. At the end of the day, what made OiNK a great place was that it was like the world’s greatest record store. Pretty much anything you could ever imagine, it was there, and it was there in the format you wanted. If OiNK cost anything, I would certainly have paid, but there isn’t the equivalent of that in the retail space right now. iTunes kind of feels like Sam Goody to me. I don’t feel cool when I go there. I’m tired of seeing John Mayer’s face pop up. I feel like I’m being hustled when I visit there, and I don’t think their product is that great. DRM, low bit rate, etc. Amazon has potential, but none of them get around the issue of pre-release leaks. And that’s what’s such a difficult puzzle at the moment. If your favorite band in the world has a leaked record out, do you listen to it or do you not listen to it? People on those boards, they’re grateful for the person that uploaded it — they’re the hero. They’re not stealing it because they’re going to make money off of it; they’re stealing it because they love the band. I’m not saying that I think OiNK is morally correct, but I do know that it existed because it filled a void of what people want.”

as an profitable and successful artists, i was mega stoked that trent reznor said this. i think his statement  testifies to the state of ambivalence surrounding filesharing more generally. but how do we begin reframeing it beyond legal terms? trent tosses an aside about the “moral correctness” of OiNK, suggesting that due to its illegal nature, filesharing is morally suspect, but i don’t think that’s the case.

i think this last sentence gets it right on the effing head (never mind how dead-on the sam goody reference is!).  i get so frustrated about the whole illegal music sharing debate because by couching it in terms of legality alone, the   issue gets cast wholesale as something wrong.  and i really disagree with that. because it’s not just about legality but it’s about alternative spaces. i suppose it’s one thing to share your latest john-mayer CD. it’s another thing if one of your best friends is an amazing musician and just made an kick-ass 2-song recording that he wants to put out himself and share with everyone. clearly sharing these things fills a cultural void that a lot of us feel. being spoon-fed the media equivalent of chee-tos–while tasty–gets orange cheese dust all over your hands…and doesn’t really consist of a cultural diet of sustenance. and something about sharing music and finding new music is not only really exciting, but also, i would argue, part of the creative process of making new music as well.