So, having skimmed a variety of recent LJ posts on the subject...

[mrph]

Today's question: Is the UK goth scene broken? And, if so, just what changes d'you think would be needed to fix it?

Yes, I know this is a can of worms. But I'm curious to see what people think. This is mostly sparked by Uncle Nem's excellent Leipzig piece and the LJ comments it triggered.

(Now that you've lured him to Leipzig, can we drag him to M'era Luna next year, chimera_s? I'd quite like to see a similar write-up on that, a very different kind of German festival...).

Comments

[markeris.livejournal.com]

Theres also a very strong argument that the net has fucked the scene up the arse.

It`s a great tool for levelling the playing fields, allowing the DIY Punk aesthetic to come forth and allow bootstrapped bands and labels slightly increased access to the channels previusly reserved to the big boys. The real charm of the UK Goth scene right now is the whole DIYness of it all. The real danger is the ceiling you reach quickly - where *do* you go after playing Gotham and Whitby? Erm...into the wider world where a lot of hard work can yield nothing.

*BUT* - I think the thing that held the goth scene together was a need for belonging, a need for similar minds . In ye olde days this would involve pub meets, regular club attendance and getting excited about gigs. For social reasons as much as the lure of the music. These days participation in a LJ forum about "why is goth so doomed in the UK?" can fulfill the same need, hence the gig audiences are down etc., because no one actually gives a fuck. Look at the number of members there are on NetGoth. In a good week (or a bad week by industry standards) if everyone who was a member went out and bought a single by the same UK band, it would hit No.1 in the charts (assuming of course that the retail points used were scanned for this - a major problem resulting from the DIY ethic). Even if only 1/4 of the people did it, theres a good chance of going top 40. So why isn`t this happening?

I suggest it`s because whilst people enjoy debates such as this, they don`t actually give a fuck, and when they do support the scene, it`s` largely based around them spending offensive amounts on clothing so they can look cool.

[markeris.livejournal.com]

Yeah, downloads have their part, but I think theres more desire to spend money on clothing ratehr than music, not just the fact y9u can`t steal it so easily.

[markeris.livejournal.com]

Waspfactory have been known to stick stuff on kazaa directly themselves. Not whole albums mind.

Deathboys an interesting experiment - he`s got around 10 albums worth of mp3s up before officialy releasing *anything* and this had made a pretty good fanbase. Now theres a commercial "everything done one louder with good production" release by Deathboy the band. If sales of that don`t pan out compared to the fanbase for the .mp3 stuff we`ll have a pretty good gauge of exactly what mr. punter wants. Sadly if they don`t want slicker, nicer looking, commercial stuff, and indeed to respond directly to an obvious and honorable "look pay me for the stuff I really really work hard on and have the rest that I knock out becasue I just can`t stop creating as a freebie" stance.

I know you`ve mentioned about "bandwidth" before, but its really not that hard or expensive to have .mp3s hosted somewhere - indeed the market model is moving slowly towards it being possible to make a small profit out of this - and I think you should bite the bullet here and just go ahead with the idea that whilst not for DJs / Media purposes, but for the rest of the marketplace, the .mp3 is the replacement for the demotape and in this sense it`s a bloody wonderful thing. It`s unfortunate that some see it as a replacement for the finished album too. My stance on this for WF stuff is :-

Donwload the .mp3 and think it`s shit? OK. delete it, don`t buy the album and go and find something good. Our bad.
Download the .mp3 and think it`s average? Our bad again. delete it. Lifes too short for mediocrity.
Download the .mp3 and like it? Go and buy it you swine. Or keep it and send us a cheque for a few quid to cover royalties or something. If the music actually works for you, you must understand that we need this money to keep giving you stuff like this.

Try before you buy wil almost certainly decrease sales to an extent. I`m comfortable with this - we only actually deserve money if people think it`s as shit hot as I do. Hopefully .mp3s as "singles" from the album will ultimately increase the amount of people exposed and thus the amount of people who will actually like and thus buy it. If this doesn`t happen of course, people will find the amount of stuff "they like" available to them decrease quite a lot over the next few years......

[mrph.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I dunno...

Firstly, I should say that I don't routinely download mp3s from Kazaa or whatever. I prefer CDs, for a whole host of reasons (including a certain snobbishness about sound quality, pretty inlays etc).

But... I do go hunting for mp3s (preferably, but not always, official ones) before festivals and the like, when I want some idea of what a band sounds like - to help me decide whether to go, to help me decide who to see (especially at things like Leipzig, where there are so many options but no info about each band on the festival site....) or just so that I know a few of the songs before I go see them. I'm not the only person who does this, either.

As a promotional tool, I do think they have their uses.