Johnnie Moore posts a great quote from Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, made in an interview with Wired.
A piece of art is not a loaf of bread. When someone steals a loaf of bread from the store, that’s it. The loaf of bread is gone. When someone downloads a piece of music, it’s just data until the listener puts that music back together with their own ears, their mind, their subjective experience. How they perceive your work changes your work.
Treating your audience like thieves is absurd. Anyone who chooses to listen to our music becomes a collaborator.
People who look at music as commerce don’t understand that. They are talking about pieces of plastic they want to sell, packages of intellectual property.
I’m not interested in selling pieces of plastic.
A really big message here. JM asks if you treat your customers like collaborators. I ask the opposite question: Are you selling pieces of plastic? If you are, how up-to-date is your resume?
