David Byrne on file-sharing

Excerpt from Interview with Xeni Jardin of boingboing (David Byrne launches internet radio station):

XJ: How do you feel about the fact that some of your fans are downloading your music for free?

David Byrne: It's a mixed bag. Sure, I would love to have compensation for that. But the argument of record companies standing up for artists rights is such a load of hooey. Most artists see nothing from record sales -- it's not an evil conspiracy, it's just the way the accounting works. That's the way major record labels are set up, from a purely pragmatic point of view. So as far as the artist goes -- who cares? I don't see much money from record sales anway, so I don't really care how people are getting it.

XJ: You've said that from an artist's perspective, one creative challenge of a cultural shift towards downloading individual songs is that when we're choosing what to download -- whether for free, or from fee-based services -- we tend to pick tunes we already know we like. Can you explain what you mean?

DB: I notice that the work of mine that tends to be downloaded most is the typical stuff, the hit singles, older Talking Heads material. From a creative point of view, the downside of that is that it becomes a kind of lowest common denominator -- you might not have as much of an opportunity to hear the full range of an artist's work as when you're buying an album. There's value in being exposed to things you didn't know you want. When you walk down the street, you have experiences that are unplanned and accidental that may expose you to new ideas, new things... it isn't just a matter of running an errand, or achieving a specific goal. It's about the accidental things that happen to you along the way.

see also: Musician and artist David Byrne, known most widely as co-founder of the Talking Heads, has just launched an internet radio station that streams the music he digs....