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Simon Phipps's personal commentary

Kate Walsh and the Crumbling Monopoly

I posted a couple of weekends ago about singer-songwriter Kate Walsh and the delicious track iTunes UK were giving away that week. I'd actually heard another of her tracks, on the SXSW showcase, and loved that one too. Try the free SXSW Showcase track, Your Song.

Those of you in the UK can go straight to iTunes as I just did and buy the whole album (it's only £4.74, amazingly ungreedy of her, almost double on plastic on Amazon). Those of you in the US can get it on the iTunes US store already too, it seems.

Turns out that this weekend she hit the new-era big time, which she deserves without a doubt - check out the clipping on her blog from The Times. No, not a number 1 single or even a number 1 album - she was top of the chart on iTunes! She has a super voice, singing hauntingly to her own guitar accompaniment (with the odd seagull added for effect). The album has many tracks I'll be playing over and over, not least that free one I linked above.

It also reveals how the music monopoly is gradually crumbling. Like Imogen Heap, who you've also read about here, she decided to start her own label rather than submit to the greed of the music industry (by the looks of it after tasting first hand how far that was going to take her). She is working incredibly hard - look at that tour schedule - but it's paying off.

You'll see in the article she was unimpressed by the industry meat market she found at SXSW Music in the US, and she stuck to her guns. The key to market access here was not talent scouts or "being signed" but iTunes and her own courage. The Music Store gave her access to a market ready to experiment and ready to buy. I'm sure she had to pay dearly to be the "free track" two weekends ago, and that aspect still sucks, but her gamble paid off.

It's the music-downloading-public that's given her this victory. The same ones who hang out on MySpace, the same ones who like to download tracks by new artists (hint to Kate: that free SXSW track could be the making of you after all and could make up for the meat market!). The same people the music industry hates and accuses of theft. Only it turns out we (as a category, probably mostly as individuals too when the price is this honest) will pay when we can for what we actually want. And the ones who won't will probably pay for a live gig. And the rest - well, who cares really once those two groups are paying at the point of value?

When we hear the RIAA and their cronies moaning about how downloads are killing their industry, they are right and we are cheering. Their greed, lack of imagination and hatred for their customers means the demand is being met not by their scheming but by the talent that's making its own way to the market through the new channels. Let's hope they stay clueless long enough for the revolution to truly take hold and build a new industry without them!

Labels: Music

posted at 5:12 AM (UK) | |