Musical iconoclast Moby's latest album,
Play, made history by being
the first album with every track licensed commercially, and sold almost four
million copies so far, quite impressive when you consider that it's not the
product of a major label. This
article sheds some light on the
Moby phenomenon: (via RobotWisdom)
"The irony is that a lot of people who really love music end up working for the
creative service branches of a bigger corporation." But not many of them work
at major record labels, according to Moby. Instead, he says, you often have
"these pencil-pushers at Seagrams, Sony and BMG, who basically see music the
same way they see pencils and mufflers. Maintain your quarterly market share
so that your stock price is artificially elevated so your CEO doesn't get
fired."
"To be honest with you, when the record first came out, having the music used
in TV shows, movies and advertisements was the only way we had of exposing it
to people. Radio wasn't playing the music. MTV and MuchMusic, they weren't
really getting behind it. So we had no way of reaching people except through
advertisements and films."