Marsupialized wrote:someone explain to me why Starbucks is a worse label to put out your record than Geffen.
It's all the same shit, whatever.

Well, for one, Starbucks is a McDonald's with coffee. Two, [b]they aren't a label.[b] Whoever said signing with Geffen is a good idea, anyway?

Marsupialized wrote:

El Protoolio wrote:

Marsupialized wrote:Starbucks or no Starbucks you don't think Steve would record the next SY record if they paid him to?

If he did then he would be associating with the same christian child sausage makers as they do wouldn't he?

he'd just be doing his job

Sonic Youth is just doing theirs. It's hard for my opinion of Steve's music to be seperate from how he conducts his business. I think that's what Scott was trying to get at.

I don't think the Starbucks-McDonald's comparison is a fair one, for several reasons.

Skronk wrote:

Marsupialized wrote:someone explain to me why Starbucks is a worse label to put out your record than Geffen.
It's all the same shit, whatever.

Well, for one, Starbucks is a McDonald's with coffee. Two, [b]they aren't a label.[b] Whoever said signing with Geffen is a good idea, anyway?

they ARE a label now and I didn't say Geffen was a good label I'm just saying SY have been on Geffen for years and now they are putting something out on another huge label what's the difference?

Is the Starbucks label huge? I don't think so...

Colonel Panic wrote:Is the Starbucks label huge? I don't think so...

they put out the new Paul McArtney record, no?
They have millions of stores and the CD's get sold in each one.
I'd say that's pretty huge.

scott wrote:

Marsupialized wrote:this is stupid, it's like bitching to Bush's tailor about Iraq.
He just made the suit, man. He has no say...or interest, really, in what the motherfucker wearing it does.

Well this is obviously nor true. For example, if he really has no interest in what the motherfucker wearing the suit does, then Steve wouldn't mind recording a band that put together their recording fund by kidnapping and selling children in some slavery ring. I'm fairly certain that a line would be drawn there, and the money considered to be in some way tainted, and the association with the band undesirable.

I think the difference that needs to be addressed here is that recording bands is Steve's day job, while Shellac is his hobby (for lack of better word), which one would argue is analogous to, say, working at a bank during the day and playing in a band in your spare time. The difference is that Steve is a well-known engineer whose name is attached to a very specific standard of ethics and doing business as evidenced by things he's written/said in the past. The question to be asked, i think is: do we separate Steve's artistic beliefs from his day job, or do those choices bleed over because of what he's decided to make a living doing?

Not to speak for the man, but based on past posts Steve has made here, my guess would be that there's a distinction to be made between engineer-for-hire-as-day-job and "artist."

I suppose i'd be annoyed if someone interviewed me about my band and said "DrAwkward, the bank you work for does business with banks that have committed predatory lending. Why should we support your music when you take a paycheck from such horrible people?"

Marsupialized wrote:

Colonel Panic wrote:Is the Starbucks label huge? I don't think so...

they put out the new Paul McArtney record, no?
They have millions of stores and the CD's get sold in each one.
I'd say that's pretty huge.

Exactly. The distro alone is probably a reach that most indie distributors would give their right nuts to have.

scott wrote:Well this is obviously nor true. For example, if he really has no interest in what the motherfucker wearing the suit does, then Steve wouldn't mind recording a band that put together their recording fund by kidnapping and selling children in some slavery ring. I'm fairly certain that a line would be drawn there, and the money considered to be in some way tainted, and the association with the band undesirable.

I'm pretty sure I did their EP.

There is an obvious difference between working for hire on someone else's enterprise (and I do this all day every day) and being the responsible party for creating something out of nothing at the behest of a corporation that wants to commodify and associate itself with your life's work.

If you choose not to see that difference, I can't help you.

The label is Hear Music. The McCartney CD is the first major one they've released, as well as a Dylan live show from the early 60s. They've had deals (the Dylan/Scorcese soundtrack and a few others) with labels where the CDs are exclusively for sale at Starbucks for a month or so, and then are released generally.

A few years ago they were testing out a machine (at least in a store I was at in Santa Monica) where you could burn your own CD from what was basically an iTunes library: six songs for $7.95, a dollar more per song after that, something like that.

So they're definitely making it more a central part of their operation.