Cultural workers living on the edge

Daniel Bachman and Snoop Dogg, with a Lloyd Cole chaster

Musician Daniel Bachman made a minor ripple on Twitter this week by posting his first quarter royalty statement. It was for $103.99. That's obviously not all of Bachman's income, which also would include the sale of physical product and other merchandise, as well as touring receipts. But it does represent, as he stated in a subsequent tweet, "all my records except for the first two I'm not in control of, for the streaming/radio/otherwise publishing royalties worldwide."

This comes on the heels of comments made by Snoop Dogg earlier this month at the Milken Institute Global Conference during a conversation with Larry Jackson, formerly the creative director for Apple Music. 

“Streaming got to get their shit together," Snoop said. “I don’t know who’s running the streaming industry—if you are here or not—but you need to give us some information on how to track this money down, cause one plus one ain’t adding up to two.”

Snoop is right, of course, but I'm less worried about Snoop than I am about the Bachmans of the world. They both deserve more from streaming, but the case is better made when you see someone like Bachman talking about a hand-to-mouth situation than with the clearly wealthy Snoop. There are economies of scale in music, as with everything else, and I fear people think more about the Taylor Swift end of the continuum than someone like Bachman. Swift's top streaming song on Spotify is "Blank Space," which has racked up 1.2 billion streams since 2014.  Bachman's best is "Little Lady Blues," which has earned 1.3 million streams in the same span. Those aren’t Swiftian numbers, but it's enough to ensure that someone is making money from Bachman's music, and it clearly isn't him.

For some your first response -- though I would hope for most people reading this it would not be many -- will be, "who is Daniel Bachman? Never heard of the guy, so why should he expect to make a living from music?" We have for so long treated creative endeavors as hobbies that we do a disservice to artists who pursue their art as a way to make their living. I would imagine Bachman doesn’t expect to get rich, but there is a wide gap between that and being paid fairly.

Bachman, is a prolific, gifted guitarist, playing mostly in the steel-string fingerstyle format (a reductive description at best) most commonly associated with John Fahey (a reference that reduces things all the more). His three most recent albums in particular have been critical blockbusters. Pick your favorite music publication, and you'll find a rave review for The Morning Star, Axacan, or last year's Almanac Behind. 

It's not easy music. Bachman creates sound that is intentionally rustic, recording in ways that capture the ambient sound of a front porch, the hiss of a radio in search of a station, a truck starting in the driveway. But it is captivating and beautiful and it draws enough listeners that he has tens of thousands of Spotify streams each month.

We have these conversations every time an artist is bold enough to share information like this, to remind us of the toll convenience and the digital world are taking on artists. I’m a fan of Bachman’s work and I have given him a little money here and there by buying his records. But you could pick any one of thousands of artists — musicians, authors, painters, sculptors, etc. — who are trying to make a go of it in an increasingly consolidated world.

I offer no solution to the larger problem, but I can offer one on a granular level. Take the tangible step of supporting artists. Listening on Spotify or Apple Music does not do this. Attend a live show. Buy an LP or a CD or a T-shirt directly from the artist. If you purchase digital music, do so on Bandcamp, where musicians get a much bigger slice of the pie (and on Bandcamp Friday, the entire pie). If your favorite artist or writer or painter has a subscription-based digital platform like Patreon or Substack, consider signing up. 

Lastly, pay attention as legislation is proposed and debated. The music industry isn't going to suddenly decide it should share more money with artists until someone forces them to do so. Snoop is right: the math isn't adding up. It never will as long as the suits in the C-suite control the calculator.

Serendipity on the shelves

Nostalgia sent me to the CD shelves last night, as a new Connells live album had me pulling old albums out to play. The North Carolina band was very much a college phenomenon for me. My fandom essentially begins with 1989’s Fun and Games and ends with 1990’s One Simple Word. The new album seems to lean heavily on later work, so I went to the archives.

But this isn’t about the Connells. It’s about the disc filed next to the band: Lloyd Cole’s Don’t Get Weird on Me, Babe. It’s an album I listened to a lot when it came out, but it seems to elude me for years at a time until something puts it back on my radar and I wear it out again.

It came out in 1991 as Cole’s fifth LP and second after splitting with his backing band, the Commotions. I know many people love his debut, Rattlesnakes,but it never connected with me. Actually, nothing before or since DGWOMB has. Even at that, it is only the first side scratches that itch, and it’s because it is essentially a Matthew Sweet record with Cole’s songs and singing.

It actually came out a month before Sweet’s breakthrough, Girlfriend, but I heard it after falling in love with the Sweet LP. It features a similar band — Sweet on bass, Fred Maher on drums, and Robert Quine on guitar — and a familiar sound in the clever lyrics and strong hooks. The second side features different players and a different sound, more string-based. It’s good music, but it lacks the punch of the first side.

I wouldn’t have it in the headphones right now had it not been for the seredipititous collision of alphabetized physical products. Cole falls next to Connells in my collection, and when I pulled out the other two discs, this one fell out as well. I often think about ripping everything I own to hi-res files and freeing up a lot of floor space (and saving future back pain), but doing so would mean missing out on the connections that lead to pleasant little moments like this.