What value does something that is “free” have? Does it devalue the actual content if it is given away?

Does something that is free have “less quality” or could it even be “less good” than something that costs money?

This is a very interesting topic when it comes to music, and it begs the question: If an artist gives their music away for “free”, is it worth listening to?

Strange question, or is it? If something is free do you want it more or less than something that is *supposed* to cost money but that you don’t pay for, like a Promo Copy of a record, or a CD given to you by an artist? Those items have value, don’t they?

Legally free or illegally free, free is free. Zero is zero, it costs you nada, zip, zilch. But, for some reason, it appears that for a large majority of people the music that is stolen is perceived to have more value than the music that is simply given away. Does that make any sense? There is a perception here that needs to be broken that “free = bad”. It is almost like the implied value in the music is in the fact that *someone* actually payed for it, even if you didn’t. It’s like ’stealing’ is being in on a secret. There is psychologically implied value in the music when you pirate it.

Well, it is time to break that thought process for a few reasons. Independent labels are going away and more and more artists are turning to the internet to distribute their work, for free.

So, how does one create value with free and why? Just because the medium is digital doesn’t mean it didn’t take time and energy and money to create it. If you like what the artist is doing, support them! There are a number of ways to help generate income from free, and I’ll go over a few of them here.

#1 - Limited free availability. Make something free for a limited amount of time, then, assign price to it. If you can’t get it for free you may want it more, and when you can’t get it for free if you want it you’ll have to buy it.

#2 - Low Resolution for free, High Rez for a price. If you download something, and you like it you can then purchase the high quality version that has all of the detail in it.

#3 - Free/Paid Content Groupings. Give away a limited amount of songs for free, but if the entire package is wanted then a certain respectable price needs to be paid.

#4 - Honor System. Let the unit/item be downloaded for free and let the listener decide after they download it what they want to pay for it.

#5 - Forced Value Acknowledgment System. Let the user download the item for free, but make them enter the actual number $0 in for the price they are willing to pay. This way they understand that they are getting it for free.

#6 - Digital / Limited Physical Bundle. Couple digital media with physical media, be it a poster or exclusive content on a collectible medium that is limited in quantity.

#7 - Just give the damn things away. If the person likes what they hear, they will value it and come back for more and possibly purchase other items.

Think of free music like this - it is the great cutout bin in the sky. How many times did you go into Tower Records (the late) hoping to find that great find in that red tag bin?

And, ultimately, why should we care about any of this? If we don’t support and encourage the artists to continue to make new music, we will be limited to experiencing music from people that just started to make it and are comfortable giving it away, and, we will loose out on all of the wonderful artists that have been making music for decades but they have stopped because they could no longer afford to create the worlds that they inhabit for us to enjoy.

And ultimately, by supporting the artists with downloads and even a little compensation we are showing them that there is value in their work and they should continue.

Just something to think about.

Artist: Isomer Transition
Title: Mission to Mars
Catalog Number: TRANS.007
Type: Digital EP
Format: 160 kbps MP3
Duration: 28 minutes
Size: 28 meg
Link:

Mission to Mars, the first episode in the “Behind the Shadow of the Moon” story series, is now available as a free 160 kbps download on transelectronic.net. If you prefer 320 kbps or WAV format you can purchase them from Beatport.

Diaspora is the story of a group of renegades scientists that are racing to Jupiter to save a mysterious planetoid from being destroyed. Releases in this series take the form of audio narratives, with the song titles representing ’scenes’. You can read Captain Rethan Doepfer’s journal entries and other story snippets here.

This is a digital release on transelectronic.net of a previously released EP. In addition to this site the music is available via iTunes, eMusic, Beatport and other fine digital retailers. The reason that I am giving these tracks away is that it makes me happy to have people listen to my work. If you like the tracks, make a donation to my paypal account (rjvaleo@gmail.com) or simply email me and let me know what you think.

Listen to the tracks:
Deep in Space - 6:00
[audio:http://www.transelectronic.net/downloads/it-mtm/01_Deep_In_Space.mp3]
Loop Me Through to Control the Mains - 6:38
[audio:http://www.transelectronic.net/downloads/it-mtm/02_Loop_Me_Through_to_Control_the_Mains.mp3]
The Exploration of Region 13 - 5:49
[audio:http://www.transelectronic.net/downloads/it-mtm/03_The_Exploration_of Region_13.mp3]
Space Madness - 6:26
[audio:http://www.transelectronic.net/downloads/it-mtm/04_Space_Madness.mp3]

Download this release as 160 kbps mp3s - CLICK HERE

Purchase this release on Beatport as WAVs or as 320 kbps mp3 - CLICK HERE

April 26th // SINK @ Reboot
A Night of Electronica in Two Movements
XELA | CLOUTIER | PANDATONE | INSIDEOUT | PRAVEEN | VALEO | CHIKA | ARIKAN | SMITH
37 Avenue A (betw. 2nd and 3rd St)
$5 / 10pm - 4am+

For this edition of SINK we have put together a very eclectic lineup of music and visuals to be performed in two movements.

Movement One
To begin our night we have Percussion Lab’s infamous Praveen know for his tasty hip hop and laptop-pop selections. Following Praveen we have Music Related’s Pandatone performing some of the most beautiful noise to come out of a laptop since Finezze was last in town. And to close out the first Movement we have Type Records’ man-in-charge John Xela performing a very special DJ set of some of the most emotive and moving electronica to ever grace the sound systems of NYC. John rarely DJs state-side, so this is a very rare opportunity to get an earful of what the head of one of the UK’s most respected electronica labels throes down.

Movement Two
Following Xela we have RJ Valeo performing as Isomer Transition. For SINK Valeo will be mixing his own productions of recent and past into his Live PA performing a special 2 hour long live set, blurring the lines between experimental, minimal, live pa and dj performance. Closing out the night we have an amazing booking of Detroit’s Eric Cloutier doing a tag-team with Clink Record’s Insideout. This is an idea that Eric and Grant have been working on for sometime and they are excited to have the opportunity to realize their joint vision of what a proper minimal techno tag-team is. This performance promises to be the highlight of the evening as we have arranged with the venue’s management to allow us to go past the usual 4am stop point for the evening. How late we go, no one knows.

Visuals & Installations
For this evening we have booked two of New York’s best visualists, Chika and Burak Arikan to crate an enveloping visual environment. Chika, with her minimalist geometric patterns, has performed along side artists such as John Tejada, Bubblyfish, Sawako, and countless others. MIT Media Lab graduate and Ars Electronica presenter Burak Arikan has been a major player in the field of data visualization, lending his visual wizardry to (amongst others) Richie Hawtin for several of his Minus tours and shows. David Smith, an acclaimed NYC artist and Warp Records colaborator will present Indexed Color, a new installation of video and slide projection. The work engages with a variety of ways of looking at and thinking about color, from Bob Ross’s relation to color field painters, to color wheel aesthetics, to the effect of colored light on photographic film.

Music
Praveen - DJ Set
PercusionLab / Music Related
http://percussionlab.com

Pandatone - Live PA
Music Related
http://musicrelated.net

John Xela - DJ Set
Type Records
http://typerecords.com

RJ Valeo - Live PA
Type Records / Moodgadget
http://transelectronic.net

Insideout - Tag Team w/Eric Cloutier
Clink Recordings
http://clinkrecordings.com

Eric Cloutier - Tag Team w/Insideout
Subtrak / The Bunker | NYC via Detroit
http://www.elementeight.net/

Visuals & Art
Burak Arikan
http://burak-arikan.com/

Chika
http://www.imagima.com/

David Smith
http://www.thedavidsmith.com

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Title: 45 Tribute – For Daniel Hansson
Label: N/A (In cooperation with Red Handed Records)
Release Date: 4.10.08

The 45 Tribute is a compilation to pay homage to the late Daniel Hansson, co-founder of Elektron Music Machines. There are 30 tracks from many well-known artists including Autechre, Dntel, Venetian Snares, Daedelus, Kim Hiorthoy, John Tejada and many more. The release also contains exclusive contributions from: The Sea and Cake, Boom Bip, Tiga, Proxy, John Starlight and others.
The album will be distributed digitally and has a $5.00 cost attached to it. All proceeds will go to the World Wildlife Fund, a cause Daniel was passionate about. Additionally, there are over 25 free songs available for download.

For more information and to order the compilation visit: http://www.45tribute.com

Price: FREE
Product Link: here
Rating: 4.5 bloops

Just as with movies and music, music production has it’s classics as well. When you think classic console you think Neve. When you think classic compressor LA-2A comes to mind. When you think classic sampler Fairlight is right there. And, when you think “classic really cool off the wall free plugins”, Destroy FX comes to mind.

Part of the smartelectronix.com software development coalition, the super destroy fx
cover a wide range of effects, including delay & pitch shifing the likes of which you have never experienced before in transverb (used in the classic OS2 track on Hobby Industries) to the bit crushing and drop-frame-non-dithering sample rate reductions of geometer. See screen shots below.

Geometer

Geometer ripping up some sound making it happier. Similar Pluggo’s Fragulator yet different at the same time. Something like the difference between Coke and Pepsi yet not at all.

Transverb

Pitch shifting delay goodness with randomize and “tomsound”. This is one of those plugins that makes a wide variety of sounds. When running vocals through it it can make you sound like Darth Vader or Alvin and the Chipmunks, both on a 10 sleepless caffeine binge of course. Sort of like a tape delay that does massive 12 octave pitch shifting with a really long playback loop, but at the same time not at all. This seems to be a common theme here.

*Tip* - When using on an EFX send be sure to turn the “dry mix” slider all the way down. There really is no need to have the dry signal coming through on the EFX buss.

Both of these fine free plugins are available as AU and VST for Macintosh and as VST for the good ole PC.

Isomer Transition Live in NYC @ LESS, Jan 26 2008

Title: Live at LESS Jan 26, 2008
Artist: Isomer Transition
Catalog Number: TRANS.006
Type: Live Performance
Year Recorded: 2008
Format: 267 kbps VBR MP3
Duration: 1 hour 07 Minutes
Size: 128.9 meg
Link:

Recorded live at Igal, Eddie and Vadim’s weekly minimal techno party on the lower east side of NYC at The Annex. Their night there is called, appropriately enough, LESS. They even use the << as a “logo” of sorts.

The night is one of the better weeklies in NYC for techno, and I have had the honor of playing at LESS several times. The crowd is always into the music, and people come there to dance, amongst other things.

This set, recorded 2 days after my 3o-somethingith birthday is particularly special to me as it is all new material never played out before. For this performance I used Ableton Live for audio, an M-Audio sound interface, and both a Drehbank and Trigger Finger for control. I hope that you enjoy.

The cover art for this release was donated by my good friend Ilan Katin. He is a graphic designer, and VJ that is currently residing, in all places, Switzerland.

No Love Live - Recorded early 1997

Title: No Love Live - NYC ‘97
Artist: Transelectronic Theory
Catalog Number: TRANS.005
Type: Live Performance
Year Recorded: 1997
Format: VBR MP3
Duration: 32 Minutes +- a few
Size: 65 meg
Link:

Back in the late ’90’s I was recording and releasing ‘underground’ diy cassettes, and later CDs, under the moniker of Transelectronic Theory. During that time I had played gigs at several raves on Long Island, as well as at a few of the NYEX parties that were going on at the time.

In January/February of 1997 I released “Sunrise” (which can be found as a digital re-issue in the downloads section), and this live set was, in a sense, a live performance of that style of music.

The promoter of the event was expecting me to play a techno set for some reason, not that I had any intent on doing that as Sunrise was anything but techno and this was the first live performance I was playing following the release of Sunrise.

To perform the set I brought out a bunch of hardware, some in a nice 8 space rack - Oberheim OB-1, Oberheim Matrix 1000, Alesis EFX units, Roland S-550 sampler, Yamaha TX81Z, DBX compressor, Alesis Microgate, a 22 channel mixer, and a few assorted stomp boxes. All of this was controlled by an old Powerbook 140 used for midi sequencing. The Powerbook was old school - it had a Motorola 68030 chip running at a massive 16 mhz. The whole thing was sequenced as patterns in Opcode’s Vision - so I could mute and un-mute parts, switch between the different patterns, copy and paste new patterns, all on the fly, and all via midi. The idea was for it to be as “live” as possible allowing me to explore each section and pattern, in order to work the crowd.

Well, there was some drama with the performance. There were some of the old school NY techno heads there, think mid-late ’90’s NYC techno and you’ll know who I am talking about, and they were saying shit like “That isn’t a live PA, he is using a computer” and shit. I took a beating from them. Not only did they bash on my live rig, they really weren’t into the music. Oh well. Sucks to be them, or at the time, it was sucking to be me.

On with the show. As soon as I started playing all of the party-goers decided to sit down and listen instead of dance. I guess that is what happens when you play an IDM set (although I hadn’t even heard of the term IDM at the time) at a techno party. About half way through the set the main promoter comes up to me and says “When are you done? You need to finish soon!” Shit! I had only been playing for 15 minutes at that time, and I had spent like 40 hours preparing for the gig! For the rest of the set he kept asking me “When are you done?!?” After a little more than 30 minutes of “torture” my set was over, and I must say, I was extremely happy with the performance, even if no one else was. Funny how that happens…

Hence the name “No Love Live in NYC”.

Listening back on the set I still find it quite enjoyable, even if it does sound like it is a little old. That is ok, it IS old, 11 years old to be exact.

I hope that you enjoy this recording of one of the finer Transelectronic Theory live performances.

Listen to the set: [audio:http://transelectronic.net/livesets/transelectronic_theory-no_love_live_nyex_10_1997.mp3]

The UK’s Burial has been making waves and receiving raves (pun intended) with his past 2 release, but has tended to stay a recluse and not expose himself to too much publicity.

In this interview he discusses growing up in the UK in a “post-rave” society, pitched up (and down) vocals, sampling video games for drum sounds and “UK Garage”.

http://www.thewire.co.uk/articles/347/